GeForce GT 320 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 925 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1500 MHz on this particular card. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 TAUs 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 much 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 is quite a bit (more or less 585%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GT 320. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 XT is the winner, by a large margin. (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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past 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 memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends 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.