GeForce GTX 950M vs Radeon HD 3470 256MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, which features core clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 950 MHz on the 256 MB of DDR2 memory. It features 40(8x5) SPUs along with 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 950M should be a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950M		32000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 1600 (5%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950M should be quite a bit (more or less 1043%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950M		36560 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 33360 (1043%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950M should be quite a bit (approximately 357%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950M		14624 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11424 (357%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.