Radeon HD 3870 512MB vs Radeon HD 6750

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6750, which features GPU core speed of 725 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1000 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 720 Stream Processors, 36 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6750		86 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		106 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (23%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6750 should theoretically be a little bit faster than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6750		64000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (11%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6750 will be a lot (more or less 110%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6750		26100 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13700 (110%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 512MB will be a small bit (approximately 7%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 6750, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6750		11600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 800 (7%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.