Radeon HD 3870 1GB vs Radeon HD 4350

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4350, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 575 MHz, and 512 MB of DDR2 memory set to run at 500 MHz through a 64-bit bus. It also is made up of 80(16x5) Stream Processors, 8 Texture Address Units, and 4 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4350		22 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 84 Watts (382%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3870 1GB will be 800% quicker than the Radeon HD 4350 in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4350		8000 MB/sec
	Difference: 64000 (800%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB will be quite a bit (more or less 170%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 4350. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4350		4600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7800 (170%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB is quite a bit (about 439%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 4350, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4350		2300 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10100 (439%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 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 anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.