Radeon HD 3850 X2 vs Radeon HD 5670

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5670, which features a GPU core clock speed of 775 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1000 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 400(80x5) SPUs, 20 TAUs, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3850 X2 is 66% quicker than the Radeon HD 5670 in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5670		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 41984 (66%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 is a lot (more or less 38%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5670. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5670		15500 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5876 (38%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 should be quite a bit (more or less 245%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 5670, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5670		6200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15176 (245%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, 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 is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.