GeForce GTX 470 vs Radeon HD 3470 256MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, which has a core clock speed of 800 MHz and a DDR2 memory frequency of 950 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is made up of 40(8x5) SPUs, 4 Texture Address Units, and 4 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 470 should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 103520 (341%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 will be quite a bit (about 962%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 30792 (962%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 470 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21080 (659%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core 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 rate is also dependant on many 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.