GeForce GTX 850M vs Radeon HD 3470 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3470 512MB, which comes with clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 950 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 40(8x5) SPUs as well as 4 Texture Address Units and 4 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 850M should theoretically be just a bit superior to the Radeon HD 3470 512MB in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 850M should be much (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 much (approximately 338%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB, and will be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of 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 fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.