GeForce 830M vs Radeon HD 3470 256MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, which comes with 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 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3470 256MB should be 111% quicker than the GeForce 830M in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
GeForce 830M		14400 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (111%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 830M should be a lot (more or less 415%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

GeForce 830M		16464 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13264 (415%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 830M is superior to the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, by far. (explain)

GeForce 830M		8232 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5032 (157%)

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 data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.