GeForce GT 230 vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 900 MHz on this model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 230		65 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 285 Watts (438%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 is 500% faster than the GeForce GT 230 overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
GeForce GT 230		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 192000 (500%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 should be a lot (approximately 582%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 230. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 230		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 51200 (582%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 is quite a bit (approximately 445%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 230, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 230		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19600 (445%)

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 max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure 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 card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. 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 fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.