GeForce GT 430 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 3470 256MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, which features core clock 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 Texture Address Units and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 3470 256MB should perform a small bit faster than the GeForce GT 430 (OEM) in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 1600 (6%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 430 (OEM) is much (approximately 250%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		11200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8000 (250%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3470 256MB will be just a bit (approximately 14%) better at AA than the GeForce GT 430 (OEM), and also able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.