GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB vs Radeon HD 3470 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3470 512MB, which has core speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 950 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 40(8x5) SPUs as well as 4 Texture Address Units and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB should be 79% quicker than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		54400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 24000 (79%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB should be much (about 450%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		17600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14400 (450%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GT 240 GDDR5 1GB		4400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1200 (38%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the 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 most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock 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 fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.