GeForce GT 320 vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5850, which comes with a clock speed of 725 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 1440(288x5) SPUs, 72 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 320		43 Watts
Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
	Difference: 108 Watts (251%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 5850, in theory, should perform much faster than the GeForce GT 320 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 320		25280 MB/sec
	Difference: 102720 (406%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 should be quite a bit (more or less 303%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GT 320. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 320		12960 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 39240 (303%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 should be much (about 437%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GT 320, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 320		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 18880 (437%)

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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses 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 can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the 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 number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.