GeForce 940M vs Radeon HD 3470 256MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, which features GPU core speed of 800 MHz, and 256 MB of DDR2 memory set to run at 950 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 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

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 3470 256MB should in theory be quite a bit better than the GeForce 940M overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
GeForce 940M		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 14400 (90%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 940M will be a lot (about 704%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

GeForce 940M		25728 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22528 (704%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 940M should be a lot (approximately 168%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce 940M		8576 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5376 (168%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the 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 most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.