Radeon HD 3470 512MB vs Radeon HD 3690/3830

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3690/3830, which comes with GPU core speed of 668 MHz, and 256 MB of GDDR3 RAM set to run at 828 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 3470 512MB should in theory be a small bit better than the Radeon HD 3690/3830 in general. (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 should be much (about 234%) more effective 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 is much (about 234%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of 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 applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.