GeForce GTX 850M vs Radeon HD 3470 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3470 512MB, which features GPU clock speed of 800 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory 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

The GeForce GTX 850M should in theory perform a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		32000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 1600 (5%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 850M will be quite a bit (approximately 995%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		35040 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31840 (995%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 850M will be a lot (about 338%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 850M		14016 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. 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 is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.