GeForce GTX 570 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 speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM works at a frequency of 950 MHz on this particular model. It features 40(8x5) SPUs as well as 4 Texture Address Units and 4 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 570 should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		152000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 121600 (400%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 570 is a lot (approximately 1273%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		43920 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 40720 (1273%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 570 is much (more or less 815%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		29280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 26080 (815%)

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 moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.