NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470, built on the Fermi architecture and the GF100 chip, occupies an 11th percentile position among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 1973. This end-of-life product from the GeForce 400 generation presents a specific set of capabilities and limitations that are best understood through its memory subsystem, comparative benchmark results, and feature set.

Memory Subsystem

The GTX 470 is equipped with 1280 MB of GDDR5 memory, a configuration that was tailored for the high-resolution gaming landscape of its release period. The memory operates across a 320-bit bus interface, which is a critical factor in determining the card's bandwidth ceiling. This combination yields a peak memory bandwidth of 133.9 GB/s, a figure that dictates how efficiently the GPU can feed its 448 shading units with texture and geometry data.

For high-resolution workloads, this memory configuration presents a dual-edged profile. The 133.9 GB/s bandwidth is sufficient for the pixel throughput demands of 1080p and early 1440p rendering, but it is not a high figure by modern standards. The 1280 MB frame buffer is the more significant constraint; modern titles at high resolutions with detailed textures will exceed this capacity, forcing the card to rely on slower system memory over the PCIe 2.0 x16 interface. Benchmark results indicate the card's Passmark G3D score of 3140 and its Passmark DirectX 11 score of 26 are influenced by this memory ceiling, as texture streaming becomes a bottleneck once the local VRAM is saturated. The memory clock runs at 837 MHz with an effective data rate of 3.3 Gbps, which is a moderate speed that contributes to the overall 133.9 GB/s figure but does not compensate for the relatively small capacity.

How It Compares

The GTX 470’s position in the benchmark hierarchy is defined by its proximity to a cluster of rivals, with score differences that are minimal in percentage terms.

NVIDIA GRID K1: The GRID K1 holds a razor-thin lead with an average score of 1976, which is a 0.2% advantage over the GTX 470’s 1973. This delta is statistically negligible, placing the two cards in a performance dead heat. The GRID K1’s slight edge is notable given its different target use case, but for raw benchmark output, the GTX 470 matches it almost exactly.

AMD Radeon RX 6750 GRE 10 GB: This modern AMD part scores 1995, representing a 1.1% delta over the GTX 470. Despite the RX 6750 GRE being a much newer product with a larger memory pool, the benchmark data shows the GTX 470 is only marginally behind. This suggests that the GTX 470’s compute-oriented Fermi architecture holds up surprisingly well in synthetic aggregate scoring, even against a contemporary card.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660M: The GTX 660M, a mobile GPU, posts an average score of 2022, which is 2.4% higher than the GTX 470. This is the largest deficit in the comparison group. The GTX 660M’s higher score is a testament to its efficiency, but the desktop GTX 470 remains a close competitor despite its older architecture and higher power requirements.

AMD Radeon HD 6670: The GTX 470 holds a clear advantage over the Radeon HD 6670, which scores 1894. The delta here is 4.2% in favor of the GTX 470. This is the only comparison where the GTX 470 leads, and it does so by a margin that, while modest, is more substantial than the differences seen with the other rivals.

Benchmark Performance

The benchmark data for the GTX 470 reveals a heterogeneous performance profile across different DirectX feature levels and compute workloads. The card achieves a Passmark G3D score of 3140, which serves as the primary aggregate metric for gaming performance. However, the component scores show significant variance: a Passmark DirectX 9 score of 62, a DirectX 10 score of 14, a DirectX 11 score of 26, and a DirectX 12 score of 11. This pattern indicates that the Fermi architecture, while supporting DirectX 12 (11_0) at the API level, delivers progressively lower relative performance as the API abstraction level increases.

The Geekbench OpenCL score of 11089 is a strong showing, suggesting that the 448 shading units are capable of substantial general-purpose compute throughput. This is corroborated by the Passmark GPU Compute score of 1026. When placed against the nearest rivals, the GTX 470’s average score of 1973 is 0.2% below the GRID K1, 1.1% below the RX 6750 GRE, and 2.4% below the GTX 660M. Conversely, it is 4.2% above the Radeon HD 6670. These deltas are remarkably small in the context of GPU performance, where generational leaps often produce double-digit percentage differences. The data suggests that the GTX 470, despite being from 2010, occupies a performance tier that is remarkably stable against a diverse set of competitors ranging from professional grid cards to modern gaming GPUs.

The pixel rate of 17.02 GPixel/s and texture rate of 34.05 GTexel/s, derived from the 40 ROPs and 56 TMUs respectively, are modest figures that align with the card’s mid-range positioning in the benchmark percentile rankings. The FP32 performance of 1,088.6 GFLOPS is a theoretical peak that the compute benchmarks only partially realize in real-world OpenCL workloads.

FAQ

Q: What is the GTX 470's memory bandwidth and bus width?

A: The GTX 470 features a 320-bit memory bus with a bandwidth of 133.9 GB/s, paired with 1280 MB of GDDR5 memory.

Q: How does the GTX 470 compare to the AMD Radeon HD 6670?

A: The GTX 470 has an average benchmark score of 1973, which is 4.2% higher than the Radeon HD 6670's score of 1894.

Q: What is the card's performance percentile ranking?

A: The GTX 470 sits in the 11th percentile of all GPUs, indicating it is outperformed by the vast majority of modern graphics cards.

Q: What is the GTX 470's maximum DirectX support level?

A: The card supports DirectX 12 (11_0), meaning it can run DirectX 12 titles but with a feature level limited to 11_0.

Q: What is the effective memory clock speed of the GTX 470?

A: The memory runs at 837 MHz with an effective data rate of 3.3 Gbps.

Q: How does the GTX 470 fare against the NVIDIA GRID K1?

A: The GTX 470 scores 1973, which is 0.2% lower than the GRID K1's average score of 1976, making them effectively equivalent in performance.

Ray Tracing and Feature Set

The GTX 470 does not include dedicated ray tracing cores or tensor cores, as these are absent from the Fermi architecture specification. The card’s feature set is defined by its 448 shading units, which handle all compute and graphics workloads through traditional rasterization pipelines. The API support includes DirectX 12 (11_0) and OpenGL 4.6, with no Vulkan support listed. This means the card can run modern games that offer DirectX 12 fallback paths, but it cannot accelerate ray-traced effects through hardware. Any ray tracing workload would have to be processed through the shader units, which is a computationally expensive method and not practical given the FP32 performance of 1,088.6 GFLOPS.

The display outputs are limited to 2x DVI and 1x mini-HDMI 1.3a, reflecting the connectivity standards of its 2010 release. The card’s texture rate of 34.05 GTexel/s and pixel rate of 17.02 GPixel/s are the primary throughput metrics for the shading units, which are sufficient for DirectX 9 and DirectX 10 era titles but will struggle with the computational demands of modern effects such as screen-space reflections or global illumination. The absence of tensor cores also means no AI-accelerated features like DLSS are available; the card relies entirely on raw shader performance for all rendering tasks. With a TDP of 215 W and requiring 2x 6-pin power connectors, the card’s power envelope is substantial for its performance tier, and the suggested 550 W PSU indicates a need for a robust power supply. The 40 nm process node from TSMC houses 3,100 million transistors on a 529 mm² die, a large chip by modern standards that explains the high power consumption relative to its benchmark scores.