Radeon HD 3470 512MB vs Radeon HD 3690/3830

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3690/3830, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 668 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM works at a speed of 828 MHz on this model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3470 512MB should be 15% quicker than the Radeon HD 3690/3830 in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (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 is a lot (about 234%) better at texture 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

The Radeon HD 3690/3830 should be much (approximately 234%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock 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 applied in one second.

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