GeForce GTX 650 vs Radeon HD 3470 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3470 512MB, which comes with a core clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 950 MHz. It also features a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 40(8x5) SPUs, 4 Texture Address Units, and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 650 should theoretically perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650		80000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 49600 (163%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 650 is much (approximately 958%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650		33856 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 30656 (958%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 650 is superior to the Radeon HD 3470 512MB, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650		16928 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13728 (429%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.