Radeon HD 3470 512MB vs Radeon R5 M230

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R5 M230, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 780 MHz. The DDR3 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this model. It features 320 SPUs as well as 20 Texture Address Units and 4 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3470 512MB should theoretically perform much faster than the Radeon R5 M230 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3470 512MB		30400 MB/sec
Radeon R5 M230		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 14400 (90%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R5 M230 should be a lot (approximately 388%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R5 M230		15600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12400 (388%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3470 512MB should be just a bit (approximately 3%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon R5 M230, and capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R5 M230		3120 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 80 (3%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.