Radeon HD 3470 512MB vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7870, which has clock speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1280 SPUs as well as 80 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7870 should theoretically be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 123200 (405%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 will be much (about 2400%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 76800 (2400%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 28800 (900%)

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 max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it 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, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are 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 better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. 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 fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.