GeForce 8600 GTS vs Radeon HD 3470 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3470 512MB, which features a core clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 950 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 40(8x5) SPUs, 4 Texture Address Units, and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce 8600 GTS should in theory be a bit better than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GTS		32000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		30400 MB/sec
	Difference: 1600 (5%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GTS is much (approximately 238%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GTS		10800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7600 (238%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8600 GTS should be much (approximately 69%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce 8600 GTS		5400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2200 (69%)

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 data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.