Radeon HD 3470 256MB vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6950, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1250 MHz on this model. It features 1408 SPUs as well as 88 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6950 should in theory perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 129600 (426%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 is much (about 2100%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 67200 (2100%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 should be quite a bit (more or less 700%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22400 (700%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.