GeForce 830M vs Radeon HD 3470 256MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, which has clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 950 MHz on the 256 MB of DDR2 RAM. It features 40(8x5) SPUs along with 4 TAUs and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 3470 256MB should theoretically be quite a bit better than the GeForce 830M overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
GeForce 830M		14400 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (111%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 830M will be much (approximately 415%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

GeForce 830M		16464 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13264 (415%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 830M is superior to the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce 830M		8232 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5032 (157%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher 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 one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.