Radeon HD 3470 512MB vs Radeon HD 6790

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6790, which comes with a core clock speed of 840 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1050 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It features 800 SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6790 should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6790 is a lot (about 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

The Radeon HD 6790 is much (about 320%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (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 max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core 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 processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.