GeForce GT 220 GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 3470 256MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 800 MHz. The DDR2 memory runs at a speed of 950 MHz on this particular model. It features 40(8x5) SPUs along with 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 GeForce GT 220 GDDR3 should in theory be a small bit superior to the Radeon HD 3470 256MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GT 220 GDDR3		32384 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 1984 (7%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 220 GDDR3 is quite a bit (approximately 213%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GT 220 GDDR3		10000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6800 (213%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GT 220 GDDR3 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GT 220 GDDR3		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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.