Radeon HD 3470 512MB vs Radeon R7 260X

Intro

The Radeon HD 3470 512MB makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM works at a frequency of 950 MHz on this particular model. It features 40(8x5) SPUs as well as 4 Texture Address Units and 4 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare all of that to the Radeon R7 260X, which features a clock frequency of 1100 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1625 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 896 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number 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 filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.