Radeon HD 3470 512MB vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M290X, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 850 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 M290X, in theory, should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 123200 (405%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X is a lot (approximately 2025%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 64800 (2025%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M290X is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24000 (750%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of 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 fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.