Radeon HD 3470 256MB vs Radeon HD 4670 512MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4670 512MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 750 MHz. The GDDR4/GDDR3/DDR3/DDR2 RAM runs at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this particular model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 32 TAUs and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4670 512MB, in theory, should be a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4670 512MB		32000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 1600 (5%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4670 512MB is quite a bit (about 650%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4670 512MB		24000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20800 (650%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4670 512MB will be quite a bit (more or less 88%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 4670 512MB		6000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2800 (88%)

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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 can be processed per second. This is worked out 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 video 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 can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.