GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 3470 256MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, which has GPU core speed of 800 MHz, and 256 MB of DDR2 RAM set to run at 950 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 40(8x5) SPUs, 4 Texture Address Units, and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) should theoretically be a lot superior to the Radeon HD 3470 256MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		108800 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 78400 (258%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) should be much (more or less 1038%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		36400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 33200 (1038%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		20800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17600 (550%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. 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 fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.