GeForce 9800 GTX vs Radeon HD 3470 256MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, which has a GPU core clock 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

Performance-wise, the GeForce 9800 GTX should in theory be much superior to the Radeon HD 3470 256MB overall. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX		70400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 40000 (132%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GTX is a lot (about 1250%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX		43200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 40000 (1250%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GTX will be a lot (approximately 238%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX		10800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7600 (238%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

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