GeForce GTS 450 1GB vs Radeon HD 3470 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3470 512MB, which has a GPU core clock speed of 800 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM set to run at 950 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised 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 GTS 450 1GB should be 90% quicker than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		57728 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 27328 (90%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 450 1GB should be much (more or less 683%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		25056 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 21856 (683%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 450 1GB is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		12528 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9328 (292%)

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 max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed 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 better the texel rate, the better the 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 maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock 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 fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.