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

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 800 MHz. The DDR2 RAM works 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

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 3470 256MB should in theory be a little bit better than the GeForce GT 430 (OEM) overall. (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) will be a lot (about 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 should be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better 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 can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.