GeForce GTS 150 vs Radeon HD 3470 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3470 512MB, which features a GPU core 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) SPUs, 4 Texture Address Units, and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTS 150 should theoretically perform a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTS 150		32000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 1600 (5%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 150 will be much (approximately 1380%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GTS 150		47360 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 44160 (1380%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTS 150 will be much (about 270%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB, and able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTS 150		11840 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		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 largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total 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 processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.