Radeon HD 3470 256MB vs Radeon HD 7790

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7790, which features a core clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 896 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7790 is 216% faster than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		96000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 65600 (216%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7790 should be much (about 1650%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		56000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 52800 (1650%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7790 will be much (more or less 400%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, and should be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 7790		16000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12800 (400%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

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