GeForce GT 320 vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7970, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 925 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1375 MHz on this card. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 320		43 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 207 Watts (481%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 7970 should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GT 320 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 320		25280 MB/sec
	Difference: 238720 (944%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 is quite a bit (approximately 814%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 320. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 320		12960 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 105440 (814%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 is quite a bit (about 585%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GT 320, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 320		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 25280 (585%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, 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 texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.