Radeon HD 3850 256MB vs Radeon HD 6670 (OEM)

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM), which features clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR5 memory. 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 6670 (OEM)		63 Watts
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		75 Watts
	Difference: 12 Watts (19%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) will be 21% quicker than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 6670 (OEM)		64000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 11008 (21%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) will be much (more or less 80%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6670 (OEM)		19200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8512 (80%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 256MB is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6670 (OEM)		6400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4288 (67%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.