GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 3470 256MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, which has a clock speed of 800 MHz and a DDR2 memory speed of 950 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is made up of 40(8x5) SPUs, 4 TAUs, and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3470 256MB should be a small bit faster than the GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 4800 (19%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3 will be much (about 175%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		8800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (175%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce 9500 GT 512MB GDDR3		4400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1200 (38%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.