Radeon HD 3870 512MB vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5830, which features a GPU core clock speed of 800 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1120(224x5) Stream Processors, 56 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		106 Watts
Radeon HD 5830		175 Watts
	Difference: 69 Watts (65%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 5830 should in theory be a lot better than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 70400 (122%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 is much (more or less 261%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32400 (261%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 should be a small bit (about 3%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 400 (3%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.