GeForce GTX 460 1GB vs Radeon HD 3470 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3470 512MB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR3 memory is set to run at a speed of 950 MHz on this card. 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

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 460 1GB should theoretically be quite a bit better than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 84800 (279%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 1GB is quite a bit (about 1081%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34600 (1081%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 1GB will be quite a bit (approximately 575%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 18400 (575%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.