GeForce GT 420 vs Radeon HD 3470 256MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, which comes with GPU clock speed of 800 MHz, and 256 MB of DDR2 RAM running at 950 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 40(8x5) Stream Processors, 4 Texture Address Units, and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 3470 256MB should in theory be just a bit superior to the GeForce GT 420 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
GeForce GT 420		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 1600 (6%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 420 will be a lot (approximately 75%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GT 420		5600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (75%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3470 256MB is a bit (more or less 14%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 420, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 3470 256MB		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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs 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 fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.