Radeon HD 3470 256MB vs Radeon R5 M230

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R5 M230, which comes with core speeds of 780 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 2048 MB of DDR3 RAM. It features 320 SPUs as well as 20 Texture Address Units and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3470 256MB should be 90% quicker than the Radeon R5 M230 in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
Radeon R5 M230		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 14400 (90%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R5 M230 is much (more or less 388%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

Radeon R5 M230		15600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12400 (388%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3470 256MB is the winner, though not by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R5 M230		3120 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 80 (3%)

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 information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If 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 higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.