GeForce GT 320 vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB, which has a clock frequency of 625 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 993 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 320		43 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		250 Watts
	Difference: 207 Watts (481%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB should in theory be much better than the GeForce GT 320 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		127104 MB/sec
GeForce GT 320		25280 MB/sec
	Difference: 101824 (403%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB is a lot (more or less 286%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 320. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		50000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 320		12960 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 37040 (286%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB is quite a bit (about 363%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 320, and will be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		20000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 320		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15680 (363%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.