GeForce 9800 GTX vs Radeon HD 3470 512MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3470 512MB, which features core clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 950 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 40(8x5) SPUs along with 4 Texture Address Units and 4 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce 9800 GTX should in theory be quite a bit better than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX		70400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 40000 (132%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GTX will be much (more or less 1250%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX		43200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 40000 (1250%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GTX is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX		10800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. 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 applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill 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 reach the max fill rate.