Radeon HD 3470 512MB vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6790, which has a clock speed of 840 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1050 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 800 SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6790 should in theory be much better than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 104000 (342%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 should be much (more or less 950%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 30400 (950%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6790 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card 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 one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel 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 potential to get to the maximum fill rate.