GeForce GTX 660 vs Radeon HD 3470 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3470 512MB, which comes with a clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 950 MHz. It also features 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 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 660 should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 113792 (374%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 will be much (approximately 2350%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 75200 (2350%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 will be much (about 635%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		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 max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over 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 memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.