GeForce GTX 470 vs Radeon HD 3690/3830

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3690/3830, which has a clock frequency of 668 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 828 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is made up of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 470		215 Watts
	Difference: 140 Watts (187%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 470 will be 405% quicker than the Radeon HD 3690/3830 in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		26496 MB/sec
	Difference: 107424 (405%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 will be much (approximately 218%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3690/3830. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 23304 (218%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 470 is superior to the Radeon HD 3690/3830, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13592 (127%)

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 max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.