GeForce GT 230 vs Radeon HD 7950

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7950, which has core speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 1536 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1792 SPUs as well as 112 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 230		65 Watts
Radeon HD 7950		200 Watts
	Difference: 135 Watts (208%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 7950 should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GT 230 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		240000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 230		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 201600 (525%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 should be much (about 918%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 230. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		89600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 230		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 80800 (918%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 is a lot (more or less 482%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GT 230, and also capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 230		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21200 (482%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.