GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 3470 256MB

Intro

Compare those specifications 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 frequency of 950 MHz on this particular card. It features 40(8x5) SPUs along with 4 TAUs and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3470 256MB should be 19% faster than the GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3 in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 4800 (19%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3 will be much (approximately 175%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		8800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (175%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3 is superior to the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce 9500 GT 1GB 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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, 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 most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.