GeForce GT 320 vs Radeon HD 4850 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, which has a GPU core clock speed of 625 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR4 memory set to run at 993 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 TAUs, 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 4850 1GB		110 Watts
	Difference: 67 Watts (156%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4850 1GB will be 151% quicker than the GeForce GT 320 in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 1GB		63552 MB/sec
GeForce GT 320		25280 MB/sec
	Difference: 38272 (151%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 1GB is much (about 93%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 320. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 1GB		25000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 320		12960 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12040 (93%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 1GB will be much (about 131%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 320, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 1GB		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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are 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 the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.