GeForce GT 420 vs Radeon R9 295X2

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 295X2, which features GPU clock speed of 1018 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1250 MHz through a 512-bit bus. It also features 2816 SPUs, 176 Texture Address Units, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 420		50 Watts
Radeon R9 295X2		500 Watts
	Difference: 450 Watts (900%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 295X2 should in theory be much faster than the GeForce GT 420 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		640000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 420		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 611200 (2122%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 295X2 will be much (approximately 6299%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 420. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		358336 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 420		5600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 352736 (6299%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 295X2 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		130304 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 420		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 127504 (4554%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs 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 output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.