GeForce GTX 660 Ti vs Radeon HD 3470 256MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 800 MHz. The DDR2 RAM runs at a speed of 950 MHz on this specific model. It features 40(8x5) SPUs along with 4 Texture Address Units and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 660 Ti should theoretically be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660 Ti		144000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 113600 (374%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 Ti is a lot (more or less 3103%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660 Ti		102480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 99280 (3103%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 Ti will be much (more or less 586%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660 Ti		21960 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 18760 (586%)

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 MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs 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 rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.