GeForce GTX 470 vs Radeon HD 3470 256MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, which features GPU clock speed of 800 MHz, and 256 MB of DDR2 memory set to run at 950 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 40(8x5) Stream Processors, 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 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 should be much (approximately 962%) more effective at anisotropic filtering 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 using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 470 is a better choice, 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 maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling 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 can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. 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, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.