GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs Radeon HD 3470 512MB

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 3470 512MB should theoretically be just a bit better than the GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3470 512MB		30400 MB/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 4800 (19%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3 is quite a bit (approximately 175%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		8800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (175%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3 should be quite a bit (about 38%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		4400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1200 (38%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

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