GeForce GTX 660 vs Radeon HD 3470 256MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, which has GPU core speed of 800 MHz, and 256 MB of DDR2 RAM running at 950 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 40(8x5) Stream Processors, 4 TAUs, and 4 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 660 should be much faster than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 113792 (374%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 should be much (about 2350%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 75200 (2350%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 will be quite a bit (more or less 635%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20320 (635%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.