Radeon HD 3470 256MB vs Radeon R5 M255

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R5 M255, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 940 MHz. The DDR3 memory is set to run at a speed of 1000 MHz on this particular model. It features 320 SPUs along with 20 Texture Address Units and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3470 256MB should in theory be much faster than the Radeon R5 M255 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
Radeon R5 M255		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 14400 (90%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R5 M255 should be a lot (more or less 488%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

Radeon R5 M255		18800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15600 (488%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R5 M255 is superior to the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R5 M255		7520 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4320 (135%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the 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 maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated 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 drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.