GeForce GT 315 vs Radeon HD 3470 512MB

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 3470 512MB should in theory be a small bit superior to the GeForce GT 315 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3470 512MB		30400 MB/sec
GeForce GT 315		25280 MB/sec
	Difference: 5120 (20%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 315 will be quite a bit (more or less 213%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GT 315		10000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6800 (213%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GT 315 is a lot (more or less 56%) more effective at AA than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB, and capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GT 315		5000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has 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 anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high 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 by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.