GeForce GTX 570 vs Radeon HD 3470 256MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, which has a clock speed of 800 MHz and a DDR2 memory frequency of 950 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is made up of 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 570 should be 400% quicker than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		152000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 121600 (400%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 570 is a lot (approximately 1273%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		43920 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 40720 (1273%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 570 is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 570		29280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 26080 (815%)

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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called 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, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.