Radeon HD 3470 256MB vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7850, which features clock speeds of 860 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1024 SPUs as well as 64 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7850 should in theory perform much faster than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 123200 (405%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 will be much (more or less 1620%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 51840 (1620%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 should be much (approximately 760%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24320 (760%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many 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.