GeForce GTX 660 vs Radeon HD 3470 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3470 512MB, which comes with a clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 950 MHz. It also features a 128-bit memory bus, and uses 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

In theory, the GeForce GTX 660 will be 374% quicker than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 should be a lot (approximately 2350%) faster with regards to 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

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 660 is a better choice, by a large margin. (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 maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, 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 anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels 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 number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as 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 of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.