GeForce GT 315 vs Radeon HD 3470 256MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 800 MHz. The DDR2 memory works at a frequency of 950 MHz on this card. It features 40(8x5) SPUs as well as 4 TAUs and 4 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3470 256MB should be 20% quicker than the GeForce GT 315 in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
GeForce GT 315		25280 MB/sec
	Difference: 5120 (20%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 315 is a lot (more or less 213%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GT 315		10000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6800 (213%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GT 315 is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GT 315		5000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1800 (56%)

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 information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, 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 maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate 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 rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.