GeForce GTX 960M vs Radeon HD 3470 512MB

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 960M will be 111% quicker than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		64000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 33600 (111%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960M should be much (approximately 1270%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		43840 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 40640 (1270%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 960M will be much (approximately 448%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		17536 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If 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, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write 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 the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.