GeForce GT 230 vs Radeon HD 4670 512MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4670 512MB, which has a GPU core clock speed of 750 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR4/GDDR3/DDR3/DDR2 RAM set to run at 1000 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 320(64x5) SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 230		65 Watts
Radeon HD 4670 512MB		70 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (8%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GT 230 will be 20% quicker than the Radeon HD 4670 512MB in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GT 230		38400 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4670 512MB		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 6400 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4670 512MB will be quite a bit (more or less 173%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 230. (explain)

Radeon HD 4670 512MB		24000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 230		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15200 (173%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4670 512MB is superior to the GeForce GT 230, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 4670 512MB		6000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 230		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1600 (36%)

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 information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

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