GeForce GT 320 vs Radeon HD 4890 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4890 1GB, which features a clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 975 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 320		43 Watts
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		190 Watts
	Difference: 147 Watts (342%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 4890 1GB should be much faster than the GeForce GT 320 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 1GB		124800 MB/sec
GeForce GT 320		25280 MB/sec
	Difference: 99520 (394%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4890 1GB is much (more or less 209%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GT 320. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 1GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 320		12960 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 27040 (209%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4890 1GB is quite a bit (approximately 270%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 320, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 1GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 320		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11680 (270%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. 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 output 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.