Radeon HD 3470 256MB vs Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB, which features a clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 480 SPUs, 24 Texture Address Units, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB		64000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 33600 (111%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB will be quite a bit (more or less 500%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB		19200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16000 (500%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB is superior to the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 6670 (OEM) 1GB		6400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3200 (100%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 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 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 texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video 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 most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.