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Radeon HD 3870 1GB vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB features core clock speeds of 775 MHz on the GPU, and 1125 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR4 memory. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6950, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1250 MHz on this particular card. It features 1408 SPUs as well as 88 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB 106 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 200 Watts
Difference: 94 Watts (89%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6950 should theoretically be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB 72000 MB/sec
Difference: 88000 (122%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 is quite a bit (about 468%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB 12400 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 58000 (468%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 is a lot (more or less 106%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB 12400 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 13200 (106%)

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

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Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 6950

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model Radeon HD 3870 1GB Radeon HD 6950
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year Nov 19, 2007 December 2010
Code Name RV670 XT Cayman Pro
Memory 1024 MB 1024 MB
Core Speed 775 MHz 800 MHz
Memory Speed 2250 MHz 5000 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 106 watts 200 watts
Bandwidth 72000 MB/sec 160000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 12400 Mtexels/sec 70400 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 12400 Mpixels/sec 25600 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 320(64x5) 1408
Texture Mapping Units 16 88
Render Output Units 16 32
Bus Type GDDR4 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 55 nm 40 nm
Transistors (Unknown) million 2640 million
Bus PCIe 2.0 x16/AGP 8x PCIe x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10.1 DirectX 11
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 4.1

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock 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 rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

Hide Prices

Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 6950

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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