GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon HD 3470 256MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, which has core 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 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 580 3GB should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 161984 (533%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB will be much (more or less 1444%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 46208 (1444%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB is much (about 1058%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, and should be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends 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.