Radeon HD 3470 512MB vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6950, which features GPU clock speed of 800 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1408 Stream Processors, 88 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6950 should be 426% quicker than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		160000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 129600 (426%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 should be quite a bit (more or less 2100%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		70400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 67200 (2100%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 will be much (about 700%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		25600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of 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 speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to 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 max fill rate.