GeForce GT 210 vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7870, which features a core clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1200 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 210		31 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 144 Watts (465%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 7870 should in theory be a lot better than the GeForce GT 210 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 210		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 140800 (1100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 is much (approximately 1598%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GT 210. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 210		4712 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 75288 (1598%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 should be quite a bit (more or less 1258%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GT 210, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 210		2356 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 29644 (1258%)

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 transferred over 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 it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core 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 quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.