GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 3470 256MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, which has a core clock speed of 800 MHz and a DDR2 memory frequency of 950 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is made up 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 9800 GX2 should in theory be much better than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB overall. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 97600 (321%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 is a lot (more or less 2300%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 73600 (2300%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should be quite a bit (approximately 500%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16000 (500%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many 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.