Radeon HD 3470 512MB vs Radeon R7 370 4G

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R7 370 4G, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 975 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1400 MHz on this particular card. It features 1024 SPUs along with 64 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R7 370 4G should theoretically be much superior to the Radeon HD 3470 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R7 370 4G		179200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 148800 (489%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 370 4G should be quite a bit (more or less 1850%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R7 370 4G		62400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 59200 (1850%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R7 370 4G will be quite a bit (approximately 875%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB, and also capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R7 370 4G		31200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 28000 (875%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. 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 better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core 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 applied per second.

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