GeForce GT 320 vs Radeon HD 4870 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, which has GPU clock speed of 750 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 Texture Address Units, 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 4870 512MB		150 Watts
	Difference: 107 Watts (249%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4870 512MB should theoretically be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GT 320 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 512MB will be a lot (approximately 131%) better at texture 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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling 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 that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number 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 many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.