Radeon HD 3850 256MB vs Radeon HD 6770 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6770 1GB, which features a clock frequency of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1050 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 800 SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		75 Watts
Radeon HD 6770 1GB		108 Watts
	Difference: 33 Watts (44%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6770 1GB should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770 1GB		67200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 14208 (27%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6770 1GB should be a lot (approximately 237%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770 1GB		36000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 25312 (237%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6770 1GB should be much (about 35%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, and should be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770 1GB		14400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3712 (35%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. 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 number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, 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 that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.