GeForce GT 320 vs Radeon HD 4850 2GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4850 2GB, which features clock speeds of 625 MHz on the GPU, and 993 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR4 memory. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 320		43 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 2GB		110 Watts
	Difference: 67 Watts (156%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4850 2GB should be much faster than the GeForce GT 320 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		63552 MB/sec
GeForce GT 320		25280 MB/sec
	Difference: 38272 (151%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 2GB will be quite a bit (about 93%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GT 320. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 320		12960 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12040 (93%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4850 2GB is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 2GB		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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.