GeForce GTX 580 vs Radeon HD 3470 256MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 800 MHz. The DDR2 RAM is set to run at a speed of 950 MHz on this particular model. It features 40(8x5) SPUs along with 4 TAUs and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 580 should in theory be much better than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 161984 (533%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 will be a lot (more or less 1444%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 46208 (1444%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 is superior to the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 33856 (1058%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.