Radeon HD 3870 1GB vs Radeon HD 5750 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5750 1GB, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 700 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1150 MHz on this specific model. It features 720(144x5) SPUs along with 36 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5750 1GB		86 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (23%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 5750 1GB, in theory, should be a little bit faster than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5750 1GB		73600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 1600 (2%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5750 1GB is a lot (approximately 103%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5750 1GB		25200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12800 (103%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB will be a little bit (approximately 11%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5750 1GB, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5750 1GB		11200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1200 (11%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.