GeForce GT 230 vs GeForce GT 420

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GT 420, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 700 MHz. The GDDR3 memory is set to run at a speed of 900 MHz on this card. It features 48 SPUs along with 8 Texture Address Units and 4 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 420		50 Watts
GeForce GT 230		65 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (30%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GT 230, in theory, should be much faster than the GeForce GT 420 overall. (explain)

GeForce GT 230		38400 MB/sec
GeForce GT 420		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 9600 (33%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 230 will be a lot (about 57%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GT 420. (explain)

GeForce GT 230		8800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 420		5600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3200 (57%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GT 230 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GT 230		4400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 420		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1600 (57%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.