GeForce GT 420 vs GeForce GTX 970

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 970, which uses a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 1050 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1750 MHz on this card. It features 1664 SPUs as well as 104 TAUs and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 420		50 Watts
GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
	Difference: 95 Watts (190%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 970 should theoretically perform much faster than the GeForce GT 420 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 420		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 195200 (678%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 will be quite a bit (more or less 1850%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 420. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 420		5600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 103600 (1850%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 420		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 64400 (2300%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.