GeForce GT 320 vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7850, which features a GPU core clock speed of 860 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1024 SPUs, 64 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 320		43 Watts
Radeon HD 7850		130 Watts
	Difference: 87 Watts (202%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 7850 should in theory be much better than the GeForce GT 320 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 320		25280 MB/sec
	Difference: 128320 (508%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 will be much (approximately 325%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 320. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 320		12960 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 42080 (325%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7850 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 320		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 23200 (537%)

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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If 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 applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling 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 chip can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.