Radeon HD 3870 1GB vs Radeon HD 6670 (OEM)

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM), which comes with a clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is made up of 480 SPUs, 24 TAUs, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6670 (OEM)		63 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 43 Watts (68%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3870 1GB should be just a bit faster than the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6670 (OEM)		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 8000 (13%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) will be a lot (approximately 55%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6670 (OEM)		19200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6800 (55%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB is a lot (approximately 94%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM), and also able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6670 (OEM)		6400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6000 (94%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred 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 memory bandwidth, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.