Radeon HD 3850 512MB vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6950, which comes with GPU core speed of 800 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1408 SPUs, 88 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		75 Watts
Radeon HD 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 125 Watts (167%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6950 should theoretically be a lot better than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
	Difference: 107008 (202%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 should be a lot (about 559%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 59712 (559%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14912 (140%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.