GeForce GT 420 vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6970, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 880 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1375 MHz on this specific card. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 420		50 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 200 Watts (400%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 6970 should theoretically be much superior to the GeForce GT 420 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 420		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 147200 (511%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 is quite a bit (approximately 1409%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 420. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 420		5600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 78880 (1409%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 will be much (approximately 906%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 420, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 420		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 25360 (906%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR 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 anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.