GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 3470 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3470 512MB, which comes with a clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 950 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It features 40(8x5) SPUs, 4 Texture Address Units, and 4 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		108800 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 78400 (258%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) is quite a bit (approximately 1038%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		36400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 33200 (1038%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) should be quite a bit (more or less 550%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		20800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17600 (550%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 most pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.