Radeon HD 3470 256MB vs Radeon HD 5670

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5670, which features core speeds of 775 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 400(80x5) SPUs as well as 20 TAUs and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 5670 should theoretically be a lot better than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5670		64000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 33600 (111%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5670 should be quite a bit (approximately 384%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5670		15500 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12300 (384%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5670 is much (approximately 94%) better at AA than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 5670		6200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3000 (94%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 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, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, 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 number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.