Radeon HD 3470 512MB vs Radeon HD 4670 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4670 1GB, which comes with a core clock frequency of 750 MHz and a GDDR4/GDDR3/DDR3/DDR2 memory speed of 1100 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It features 320(64x5) SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4670 1GB is 16% quicker than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 4670 1GB		35200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 4800 (16%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4670 1GB should be quite a bit (about 650%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4670 1GB		24000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20800 (650%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4670 1GB should be a lot (approximately 88%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB, and also able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 4670 1GB		6000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		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 largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 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 anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. 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 quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.