Radeon HD 3850 256MB vs Radeon HD 6750 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6750 1GB, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 725 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this particular card. It features 720 SPUs as well as 36 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		75 Watts
Radeon HD 6750 1GB		86 Watts
	Difference: 11 Watts (15%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6750 1GB should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6750 1GB		64000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 11008 (21%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6750 1GB will be much (more or less 144%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6750 1GB		26100 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15412 (144%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6750 1GB is a better choice, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

Radeon HD 6750 1GB		11600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 912 (9%)

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 transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

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