Radeon HD 3850 512MB vs Radeon HD 6670 (OEM)

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM), which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this particular model. It features 480 SPUs as well as 24 TAUs 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 512MB		75 Watts
	Difference: 12 Watts (19%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) is 21% faster than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 6670 (OEM)		64000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 11008 (21%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) is much (about 80%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6670 (OEM)		19200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8512 (80%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 512MB is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		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 maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video 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 most pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.