Radeon HD 3470 256MB vs Radeon HD 6990

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6990, which comes with clock speeds of 830 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 6990 should be much faster than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		320000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 289600 (953%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 is much (approximately 4880%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		159360 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 156160 (4880%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6990 is quite a bit (approximately 1560%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6990		53120 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 49920 (1560%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at 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 write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.