GeForce GT 320 vs Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, which features a clock frequency of 625 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 993 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 320		43 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		110 Watts
	Difference: 67 Watts (156%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4850 512MB should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GT 320 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
GeForce GT 320		25280 MB/sec
	Difference: 38272 (151%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 512MB is a lot (approximately 93%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 320. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 320		12960 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12040 (93%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 512MB should be quite a bit (about 131%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GT 320, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 320		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5680 (131%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, 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 amount of pixels that the graphics chip could 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 Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.