Radeon HD 3870 1GB vs Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 650 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this specific model. It features 480 SPUs as well as 24 Texture Address Units and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB		50 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 56 Watts (112%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB should in theory perform just a bit faster than the Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 8000 (13%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB will be much (approximately 26%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB		15600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3200 (26%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 1GB is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 2GB		5200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7200 (138%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core 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 also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.