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

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 650 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1000 MHz on this specific model. 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

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 3870 1GB should theoretically be a small bit better than the Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB overall. (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 (about 26%) faster with regards to anisotropic 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

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB will be quite a bit (more or less 138%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (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 max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.