GeForce GT 420 vs Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 650 MHz. The GDDR3 memory works at a speed of 900 MHz on this particular card. It features 480 SPUs as well as 24 Texture Address Units and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have the exact same memory bandwidth, so in theory they should perform exactly the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB is much (more or less 179%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GT 420. (explain)

Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB		15600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 420		5600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10000 (179%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB is quite a bit (about 86%) better at AA than the GeForce GT 420, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 6570 (OEM) 1GB		5200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 420		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (86%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total 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 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 the video card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.