Radeon HD 3470 512MB vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which features core clock speeds of 775 MHz on the GPU, and 1125 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR4 RAM. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 3870 1GB should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 41600 (137%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB will be a lot (about 288%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9200 (288%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB will be quite a bit (more or less 288%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB, and should be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9200 (288%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.