GeForce 820M vs Radeon HD 3470 256MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, which features a clock frequency of 800 MHz and a DDR2 memory frequency of 950 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 40(8x5) SPUs, 4 Texture Address Units, and 4 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3470 256MB will be 90% quicker than the GeForce 820M in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
GeForce 820M		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 14400 (90%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 820M is a lot (approximately 260%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

GeForce 820M		11504 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8304 (260%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3470 256MB is just a bit (more or less 11%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 820M, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 820M		2876 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 324 (11%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, 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 most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.