Radeon HD 3470 512MB vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6850, which comes with GPU core speed of 775 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 960 SPUs, 48 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6850 should theoretically be much superior to 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 a lot (about 1063%) faster with regards to anisotropic 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 will be quite a bit (about 675%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB, and will be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (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 maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant 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.