GeForce GT 230 vs Radeon HD 7770

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7770, which has GPU core speed of 1000 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1125 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 640 SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 230		65 Watts
Radeon HD 7770		80 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (23%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7770 should be 88% faster than the GeForce GT 230 overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		72000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 230		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 33600 (88%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7770 will be much (more or less 355%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GT 230. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 230		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31200 (355%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7770 is much (more or less 264%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 230, and will be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 7770		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 230		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11600 (264%)

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 information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are 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 better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.