Radeon HD 3470 256MB vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6970, which features core clock speeds of 880 MHz on the GPU, and 1375 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6970 should theoretically perform much faster than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 145600 (479%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 will be a lot (more or less 2540%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 81280 (2540%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be quite a bit (about 780%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24960 (780%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video 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 number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.