GeForce GTX 850M 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 RAM running at 950 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 40(8x5) Stream Processors, 4 TAUs, and 4 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 850M should be just a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		32000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 1600 (5%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 850M will be much (approximately 995%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		35040 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31840 (995%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 850M is superior to the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		14016 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10816 (338%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus 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 card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip 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 ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.