GeForce GTX 850M vs Radeon HD 3470 256MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 800 MHz. The DDR2 RAM works at a speed of 950 MHz on this model. It features 40(8x5) SPUs as well as 4 Texture Address Units and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 850M should theoretically be a bit superior to the Radeon HD 3470 256MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		32000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 1600 (5%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 850M will be a lot (about 995%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		35040 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31840 (995%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 850M is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		14016 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10816 (338%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one 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 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 fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.