GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 3470 256MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, which features a core clock frequency of 800 MHz and a DDR2 memory frequency of 950 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It features 40(8x5) SPUs, 4 Texture Address Units, and 4 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 9800 GX2 should perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB in general. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 97600 (321%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 should be quite a bit (more or less 2300%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 73600 (2300%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GX2 is superior to the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, by far. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16000 (500%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's 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 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant 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.