GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon HD 3470 512MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3470 512MB, which has GPU clock speed of 800 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM set to run at 950 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 40(8x5) SPUs, 4 Texture Address Units, and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 9800 GX2 should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 97600 (321%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 is quite a bit (approximately 2300%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 73600 (2300%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GX2 is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

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