GeForce GT 420 vs Radeon HD 3470 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3470 512MB, which comes with GPU clock speed of 800 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory running at 950 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 40(8x5) Stream Processors, 4 Texture Address Units, and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3470 512MB, in theory, should be a bit faster than the GeForce GT 420 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3470 512MB		30400 MB/sec
GeForce GT 420		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 1600 (6%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 420 should be much (more or less 75%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GT 420		5600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (75%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3470 512MB is a better choice, though only just barely. (explain)

Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 420		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 400 (14%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.