GeForce GT 420 vs Radeon HD 3470 512MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3470 512MB, which features clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 950 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. 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

In theory, the Radeon HD 3470 512MB will be 6% quicker than the GeForce GT 420 in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 3470 512MB		30400 MB/sec
GeForce GT 420		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 1600 (6%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 420 will be much (approximately 75%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GT 420		5600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (75%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3470 512MB should be a little bit (approximately 14%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 420, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 420		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 400 (14%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as 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, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.