GeForce GT 320 vs Radeon HD 4850 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4850 1GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 625 MHz. The GDDR4 RAM runs at a frequency of 993 MHz on this specific model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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% faster than the GeForce GT 320 overall, because of its greater 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 quite a bit (about 93%) faster with regards to AF 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 a lot (more or less 131%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 320, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs 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 rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.