GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon HD 3470 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3470 512MB, which has core clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 950 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 40(8x5) SPUs as well as 4 Texture Address Units and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 8600 GTS is 5% faster than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 1600 (5%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GTS is much (about 238%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7600 (238%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce 8600 GTS is superior to the Radeon HD 3470 512MB, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2200 (69%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount 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 applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.