Radeon HD 3470 512MB vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6970, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 880 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1375 MHz on this specific model. 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

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6970 should in theory be a lot superior to the Radeon HD 3470 512MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 145600 (479%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be a lot (approximately 2540%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 81280 (2540%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 is quite a bit (approximately 780%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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