Radeon HD 3850 512MB vs Radeon HD 7770

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7770, which comes with clock speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1125 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 640 SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		75 Watts
Radeon HD 7770		80 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (7%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7770 should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		72000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 19008 (36%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7770 should be a lot (more or less 274%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		40000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 29312 (274%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7770 is much (more or less 50%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		16000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.