GeForce GTX 560 vs Radeon HD 3470 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3470 512MB, which features core clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 950 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 40(8x5) SPUs as well as 4 TAUs and 4 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 560 should in theory be much better than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560		128128 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 97728 (321%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 560 should be quite a bit (approximately 1318%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560		45360 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 42160 (1318%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 560 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560		25920 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22720 (710%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses 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 high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs 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 rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.