GeForce GT 320 vs Radeon HD 4870 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, which has GPU core speed of 750 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, 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 4870 512MB		150 Watts
	Difference: 107 Watts (249%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 4870 512MB should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GT 320 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GT 320		25280 MB/sec
	Difference: 89920 (356%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 512MB is quite a bit (approximately 131%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 320. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 320		12960 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 17040 (131%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4870 512MB is superior to the GeForce GT 320, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 320		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7680 (178%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 can be applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour 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 fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.