Radeon HD 3850 AGP vs Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition
Summary
Reasons to consider Radeon HD 3850 AGP |
| 100 watts lower power draw. This might be a strong point if your current power supply is not enough to handle the Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition . |
| Based on an outdated architecture (ATI TeraScale), there are no performance optimizations for current games and applications |
Reasons to consider Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition |
| This is a much newer product, it might have better long term support. |
| Higher theoretical gaming performance, based on specifications. |
| Supports Direct3D 12 Async Compute |
| Supports ReLive (allows game streaming/recording with minimum performance penalty) |
| Supports Mantle |
| Based on an outdated architecture (AMD GCN), there may be no performance optimizations for current games and applications |
HWBench recommends Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition
Based on theoretical specifications.
Core Configuration
| Radeon HD 3850 AGP | | Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition | |
|---|
| GPU Name | RV670 (RV670 PRO) | vs | Pitcairn (Pitcairn XT) |
| Fab Process | 55 nm | vs | 28 nm |
| Die Size | 192 mm² | vs | 212 mm² |
| Transistors | 666 million | vs | 2,800 million |
| Shaders | 320 | vs | 1280 |
| Compute Units | 4 | vs | 20 |
| Core clock | 668 MHz | vs | 1000 MHz |
| ROPs | 16 | vs | 32 |
| TMUs | 16 | vs | 80 |
Memory Configuration
| Radeon HD 3850 AGP | | Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition | |
|---|
| Memory Type | GDDR3 | vs | GDDR5 |
| Bus Width | 256 bit | vs | 256 bit |
| Memory Speed | 828 MHz
1656 MHz effective | vs | 1200 MHz
4800 MHz effective |
| Memory Size | 512 Mb | vs | 2048 Mb |
Additional details
| Radeon HD 3850 AGP | | Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition | |
|---|
| TDP | 75 watts | vs | 175 watts |
| Release Date | 3 Jan 2008 | vs | 5 Mar 2012 |
GigaPixels - higher is better
GigaTexels - higher is better
GFLOPs - higher is better