Radeon HD 3470 512MB vs Radeon HD 3690/3830

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3690/3830, which has core clock speeds of 668 MHz on the GPU, and 828 MHz on the 256 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3470 512MB should perform just a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3690/3830 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3470 512MB		30400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		26496 MB/sec
	Difference: 3904 (15%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3690/3830 will be a lot (about 234%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7488 (234%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3690/3830 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7488 (234%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output 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 maximum fill rate.