GeForce GTX 550 Ti vs Radeon HD 3470 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3470 512MB, which has GPU clock speed of 800 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM set to run at 950 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 40(8x5) SPUs, 4 Texture Address Units, and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 550 Ti will be 224% quicker than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 68096 (224%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 550 Ti should be a lot (more or less 800%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 25600 (800%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 550 Ti is superior to the Radeon HD 3470 512MB, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 18400 (575%)

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 max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.