GeForce GT 320 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 925 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 1500 MHz on this specific card. It features 1536 SPUs along with 96 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 320		43 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 142 Watts (330%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7870 XT, in theory, should be a lot faster than the GeForce GT 320 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 320		25280 MB/sec
	Difference: 166720 (659%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT will be a lot (more or less 585%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 320. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 320		12960 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 75840 (585%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT should be much (more or less 585%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 320, and should be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 320		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 25280 (585%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at 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 the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units 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 rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.