GeForce GTX 460 2GB vs Radeon HD 3470 256MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, which comes with clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 950 MHz on the 256 MB of DDR2 memory. It features 40(8x5) SPUs as well as 4 TAUs and 4 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 460 2GB, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		115200 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 84800 (279%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 2GB should be much (approximately 1081%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 34600 (1081%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 460 2GB is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.