GeForce GTX 960M vs Radeon HD 3470 256MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, which features a clock frequency of 800 MHz and a DDR2 memory frequency of 950 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It features 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 960M should be 111% quicker than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		64000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 33600 (111%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960M is quite a bit (about 1270%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		43840 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 40640 (1270%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 960M is superior to the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		17536 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14336 (448%)

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 transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.