Radeon HD 3470 512MB vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7850, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 860 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1200 MHz on this specific model. It features 1024 SPUs as well as 64 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 7850 should theoretically be a lot superior to the Radeon HD 3470 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 123200 (405%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 is quite a bit (about 1620%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 51840 (1620%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 should be much (more or less 760%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.