Geforce GTX 670 vs Radeon HD 3470 256MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, which comes with a clock speed of 800 MHz and a DDR2 memory speed of 950 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is made up of 40(8x5) SPUs, 4 Texture Address Units, and 4 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Geforce GTX 670 will be 532% quicker than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Geforce GTX 670		192000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 161600 (532%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 670 should be quite a bit (more or less 3103%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

Geforce GTX 670		102480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 99280 (3103%)

Pixel Rate

The Geforce GTX 670 is much (about 815%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Geforce GTX 670		29280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 26080 (815%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.