GeForce GT 210 vs Radeon HD 7870 XT

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, which has a core clock speed of 925 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1536 SPUs, 96 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 210		31 Watts
Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
	Difference: 154 Watts (497%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7870 XT should in theory perform a lot faster than the GeForce GT 210 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 210		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 179200 (1400%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 XT should be quite a bit (approximately 1785%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 210. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 210		4712 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 84088 (1785%)

Pixel Rate

If using 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 210		2356 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 27244 (1156%)

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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.