Radeon HD 3850 512MB vs Radeon HD 4670 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4670 1GB, which comes with a core clock speed of 750 MHz and a GDDR4/GDDR3/DDR3/DDR2 memory speed of 1100 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is made up of 320(64x5) SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4670 1GB		70 Watts
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		75 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (7%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 3850 512MB should in theory be quite a bit better than the Radeon HD 4670 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4670 1GB		35200 MB/sec
	Difference: 17792 (51%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4670 1GB will be much (more or less 125%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4670 1GB		24000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13312 (125%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 512MB is superior to the Radeon HD 4670 1GB, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4670 1GB		6000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4688 (78%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.