Radeon HD 3850 512MB vs Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB, which features a core clock speed of 650 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also features a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 480 SPUs, 24 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB		50 Watts
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		75 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB should in theory be a lot better than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB		64000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 11008 (21%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB will be much (approximately 46%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB		15600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4912 (46%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 512MB is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB		5200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5488 (106%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.