GeForce GTX 960M vs Radeon HD 3470 512MB

Intro

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

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 960M should in theory be a lot superior to the Radeon HD 3470 512MB in general. (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 quite a bit (more or less 1270%) more effective at texture 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 is a lot (about 448%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called 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 of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.