Radeon HD 3470 256MB vs Radeon HD 5830

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5830, which has core clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1120(224x5) SPUs as well as 56 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 5830 should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the Radeon HD 3470 256MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 97600 (321%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5830 should be a lot (more or less 1300%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		44800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 41600 (1300%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5830 is superior to the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 5830		12800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9600 (300%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.