In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 670 DirectCU II Top Edition are significantly better than the Nvidia GeForce GTX 470 Golden Sample Edition.

The GTX 670 has a 408 MHz higher core clock speed and 56 more Texture Mapping Units than the GTX 470. This results in the GTX 670 providing 82.1 GTexel/s better texturing performance. This still holds weight but shader performance is generally more relevant, particularly since both of these GPUs support at least DirectX 10.

The GTX 670 has a 408 MHz higher core clock speed but 8 fewer Render Output Units than the GTX 470. The lower ROP count doesn't matter, though, as altogether the GTX 670 manages to provide 7.9 GPixel/s better pixeling performance. However, both GPUs support DirectX 9 or above, and pixeling performance is only really relevant when comparing older cards.

The GTX 670 was released over a year more recently than the GTX 470, and so the GTX 670 is likely to have better driver support, meaning it will be more optimized for running the latest games when compared to the GTX 470.

The GTX 670 has 768 MB more video memory than the GTX 470, so is likely to be much better at displaying game textures at higher resolutions. This is supported by the fact that the GTX 670 also has superior memory performance overall.

The GTX 670 has 56.3 GB/sec greater memory bandwidth than the GTX 470, which means that the memory performance of the GTX 670 is much better than the GTX 470.

The GeForce GTX 470 Golden Sample Edition has 448 Shader Processing Units and the GeForce GTX 670 DirectCU II Top Edition has 1344. However, the actual shader performance of the GTX 470 is 582 and the actual shader performance of the GTX 670 is 1528. The GTX 670 having 946 better shader performance and an altogether better performance when taking into account other relevant data means that the GTX 670 delivers a massively smoother and more efficient experience when processing graphical data than the GTX 470.

The GTX 670 transistor size technology is 12 nm (nanometers) smaller than the GTX 470. This means that the GTX 670 is expected to run slightly cooler and achieve higher clock frequencies than the GTX 470.

The GeForce GTX 470 Golden Sample Edition requires 215 Watts to run but there is no entry for the GeForce GTX 670 DirectCU II Top Edition. We would recommend a PSU with at least 550 Watts for the GTX 470.