GeForce GT 320 vs Radeon HD 3870 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, which has core clock speeds of 775 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 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 3870 512MB		106 Watts
	Difference: 63 Watts (147%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3870 512MB will be 128% faster than the GeForce GT 320 overall, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 320		25280 MB/sec
	Difference: 32320 (128%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 320 will be a bit (more or less 5%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GT 320		12960 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 560 (5%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 512MB is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 320		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8080 (187%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across 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 type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.