Radeon HD 3870 512MB vs Radeon HD 5670

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5670, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 775 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this model. It features 400(80x5) SPUs along with 20 Texture Address Units and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5670		61 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		106 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (74%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5670 should be just a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5670		64000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (11%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5670 will be quite a bit (about 25%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5670		15500 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3100 (25%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 512MB will be quite a bit (more or less 100%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 5670, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5670		6200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6200 (100%)

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 max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.