Radeon HD 3470 256MB vs Radeon HD 6770 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6770 1GB, which has a clock frequency of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1050 MHz. It also features a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It features 800 SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 6770 1GB should be much faster than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770 1GB		67200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 36800 (121%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6770 1GB will be a lot (approximately 1025%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770 1GB		36000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32800 (1025%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6770 1GB is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6770 1GB		14400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11200 (350%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it must 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total 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 processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount 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 output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.