GeForce GT 420 vs Radeon HD 3470 256MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 800 MHz. The DDR2 memory runs at a frequency of 950 MHz on this card. It features 40(8x5) SPUs as well as 4 TAUs and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3470 256MB should in theory be a little bit faster than the GeForce GT 420 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
GeForce GT 420		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 1600 (6%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 420 will be much (approximately 75%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GT 420		5600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (75%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3470 256MB is a better choice, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 420		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 400 (14%)

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 information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). 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.