GeForce GT 320 vs GeForce GTX 260

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 260, which makes use of a 65 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 576 MHz. The GDDR3 memory runs at a speed of 999 MHz on this model. It features 192 SPUs along with 64 Texture Address Units and 28 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 320		43 Watts
GeForce GTX 260		182 Watts
	Difference: 139 Watts (323%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 260 should in theory be much superior to the GeForce GT 320 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		111888 MB/sec
GeForce GT 320		25280 MB/sec
	Difference: 86608 (343%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 is quite a bit (about 184%) better at AF than the GeForce GT 320. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 320		12960 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 23904 (184%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 should be much (approximately 273%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 320, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		16128 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 320		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11808 (273%)

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. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, 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 per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.