Radeon HD 3850 1GB vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which comes with GPU clock speed of 775 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR4 memory set to run at 1125 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		75 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 31 Watts (41%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB should theoretically perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 19008 (36%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB should be just a bit (about 16%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1712 (16%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB will be a small bit (more or less 16%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1712 (16%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the 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 most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.