GeForce GT 230 vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7850, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 860 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1024 Stream Processors, 64 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 230		65 Watts
Radeon HD 7850		130 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7850 should theoretically be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GT 230 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 230		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 115200 (300%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 is a lot (about 525%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 230. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 230		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 46240 (525%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 should be much (about 525%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 230, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 230		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 23120 (525%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should 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 anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.