GeForce GT 420 vs Radeon HD 5570

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5570, which has a core clock frequency of 650 MHz and a DDR3 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It features 400(80x5) SPUs, 20 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5570		43 Watts
GeForce GT 420		50 Watts
	Difference: 7 Watts (16%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have the exact same bandwidth, so theoretically they should perform the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5570 will be a lot (more or less 132%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GT 420. (explain)

Radeon HD 5570		13000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 420		5600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7400 (132%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5570 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 5570		5200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 420		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (86%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. 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 is also dependant on quite a few 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.