Radeon HD 3870 1GB vs Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB, which features clock speeds of 650 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 480 SPUs along with 24 Texture Address Units and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB		50 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 56 Watts (112%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3870 1GB should be 13% quicker than the Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 8000 (13%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB is much (approximately 26%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB		15600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3200 (26%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 1GB is superior to the Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB		5200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7200 (138%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.