Geforce GTX 780 vs Radeon HD 3470 256MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, which comes with a core clock speed of 800 MHz and a DDR2 memory frequency of 950 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit 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

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Geforce GTX 780 should be much faster than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB in general. (explain)

Geforce GTX 780		288384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 257984 (849%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 780 will be much (about 5078%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

Geforce GTX 780		165696 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 162496 (5078%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Geforce GTX 780 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Geforce GTX 780		41424 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 38224 (1195%)

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 max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, 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 most pixels that the graphics chip can 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 Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. 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 rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.