Radeon HD 3850 1GB vs Radeon HD 7770

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7770, which features a GPU core clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1125 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 640 Stream Processors, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		75 Watts
Radeon HD 7770		80 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (7%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 7770 should in theory be a lot better than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		72000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 19008 (36%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7770 is quite a bit (about 274%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		40000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 29312 (274%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7770 is much (approximately 50%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		16000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5312 (50%)

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 max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at 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 that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.