Radeon HD 3470 256MB vs Radeon R7 250X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R7 250X, which comes with a clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1125 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 640 SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R7 250X should be much faster than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R7 250X		72000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 41600 (137%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 250X is a lot (about 1150%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

Radeon R7 250X		40000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 36800 (1150%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R7 250X is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon R7 250X		16000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12800 (400%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). 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 get to the max fill rate.