Radeon HD 3470 256MB vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6850, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 775 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1000 MHz on this specific model. It features 960 SPUs as well as 48 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 6850 should theoretically perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 97600 (321%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 should be quite a bit (about 1063%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34000 (1063%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 will be quite a bit (about 675%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, and also capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21600 (675%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the 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 maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called 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 bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.