Radeon HD 3850 256MB vs Radeon HD 6870

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6870, which comes with clock speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1050 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1120 SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		75 Watts
Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
	Difference: 76 Watts (101%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6870 should in theory be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 81408 (154%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 should be quite a bit (more or less 372%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 39712 (372%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6870 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 18112 (169%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.