GeForce GT 320 vs Radeon HD 4870 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4870 2GB, which features GPU core speed of 750 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 TAUs, and 16 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 4870 2GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 107 Watts (249%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 4870 2GB should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GT 320 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GT 320		25280 MB/sec
	Difference: 89920 (356%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 2GB is quite a bit (approximately 131%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 320. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 320		12960 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 17040 (131%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 2GB is quite a bit (more or less 178%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 320, and able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 2GB		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 over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, 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 the video card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends 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.