Radeon HD 3470 512MB vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6850, which has core speeds of 775 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 960 SPUs along with 48 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6850 should be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 97600 (321%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 should be much (about 1063%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34000 (1063%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 is quite a bit (approximately 675%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21600 (675%)

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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.