Radeon HD 3870 1GB vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which features core clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1408 SPUs as well as 88 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 94 Watts (89%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB should theoretically perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 88000 (122%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB should be a lot (approximately 468%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 58000 (468%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 2GB is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		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

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen 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 number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.