GeForce 9800 GTX+ vs Radeon HD 3470 512MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3470 512MB, which comes with a core clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 950 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is made up of 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 9800 GTX+, in theory, should perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB in general. (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 quite a bit (more or less 1376%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX+		47232 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 44032 (1376%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GTX+ should be a lot (approximately 269%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB, and capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX+		11808 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8608 (269%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.