GeForce 9800 GTX vs Radeon HD 3470 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3470 512MB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a frequency of 950 MHz on this particular card. It features 40(8x5) SPUs along with 4 TAUs and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 9800 GTX is 132% faster than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX		70400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 40000 (132%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GTX should be much (more or less 1250%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX		43200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 40000 (1250%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GTX is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX		10800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7600 (238%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, 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 AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

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