Radeon HD 3470 256MB vs Radeon HD 7990

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7990, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 950 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1500 MHz on this model. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7990 should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990		576000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 545600 (1795%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7990 is a lot (more or less 7500%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990		243200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 240000 (7500%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7990 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990		60800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 57600 (1800%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.