Radeon HD 3470 256MB vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6790, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 840 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1050 MHz on this particular card. It features 800 SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6790, in theory, should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 104000 (342%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 will be quite a bit (about 950%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 30400 (950%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6790 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10240 (320%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.