Radeon HD 3870 1GB vs Radeon HD 6750 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6750 1GB, which has a clock speed of 725 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 720 SPUs, 36 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6750 1GB		86 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (23%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3870 1GB should perform a little bit faster than the Radeon HD 6750 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6750 1GB		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 8000 (13%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6750 1GB should be much (more or less 110%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6750 1GB		26100 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13700 (110%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB is a small bit (about 7%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6750 1GB, and will be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6750 1GB		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 maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's 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 are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics 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 video card could possibly record to its local memory in one 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 - 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 quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.