GeForce GT 315 vs Radeon HD 3470 256MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, which has core speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 950 MHz on the 256 MB of DDR2 memory. It features 40(8x5) SPUs along with 4 TAUs and 4 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3470 256MB should be 20% faster than the GeForce GT 315 overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
GeForce GT 315		25280 MB/sec
	Difference: 5120 (20%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 315 is quite a bit (more or less 213%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GT 315		10000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6800 (213%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GT 315 is superior to the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GT 315		5000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1800 (56%)

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount 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 fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.