GeForce GTS 150 vs Radeon HD 3470 256MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, which comes with a clock frequency of 800 MHz and a DDR2 memory frequency of 950 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It features 40(8x5) SPUs, 4 Texture Address Units, and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTS 150 is 5% faster than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTS 150		32000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 1600 (5%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 150 should be a lot (more or less 1380%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 150		47360 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 44160 (1380%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTS 150 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTS 150		11840 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8640 (270%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If 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 high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.