Radeon HD 3870 512MB vs Radeon HD 6750

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6750, which features a GPU core clock speed of 725 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1000 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 720 SPUs, 36 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6750		86 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		106 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (23%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 6750 should be a little bit faster than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6750		64000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (11%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6750 will be quite a bit (more or less 110%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6750		26100 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13700 (110%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 512MB is the winner, though only just barely. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6750		11600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 800 (7%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, 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, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as 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, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.