Radeon HD 3470 512MB vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6850, which has clock speeds of 775 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 960 SPUs as well as 48 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6850 should in theory be much 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 is much (approximately 1063%) more effective 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

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6850 is the winner, by a large margin. (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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video 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 could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core 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 is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.