Radeon HD 3850 1GB vs Radeon HD 4770

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4770, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 800 MHz on this specific card. It features 640(128x5) SPUs as well as 32 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 3850 1GB		75 Watts
Radeon HD 4770		80 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (7%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3850 1GB, in theory, should be a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 4770 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		52992 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4770		51200 MB/sec
	Difference: 1792 (4%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4770 will be much (more or less 125%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4770		24000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13312 (125%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4770 is superior to the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, though only just barely. (explain)

Radeon HD 4770		12000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1312 (12%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.