Radeon HD 3470 256MB vs Radeon R7 240

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R7 240, which has a clock speed of 730 MHz and a DDR3 memory speed of 900 MHz. It also features a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 320 SPUs, 20 Texture Address Units, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3470 256MB should in theory be just a bit faster than the Radeon R7 240 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
Radeon R7 240		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 1600 (6%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 240 will be a lot (about 356%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

Radeon R7 240		14600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11400 (356%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R7 240 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R7 240		5840 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2640 (83%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per 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 better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.