Radeon HD 3470 256MB vs Radeon HD 4670 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4670 512MB, which has core speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR4/GDDR3/DDR3/DDR2 RAM. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 32 Texture Address Units and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4670 512MB should in theory be a little bit better than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB overall. (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 will be much (more or less 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 much (about 88%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.