GeForce GT 315 vs GeForce GT 420

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GT 420, which comes with GPU clock speed of 700 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR3 memory set to run at 900 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 48 SPUs, 8 Texture Address Units, and 4 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 420		50 Watts
GeForce GT 315		52 Watts
	Difference: 2 Watts (4%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GT 420 should theoretically be a small bit better than the GeForce GT 315 overall. (explain)

GeForce GT 420		28800 MB/sec
GeForce GT 315		25280 MB/sec
	Difference: 3520 (14%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 315 will be much (more or less 79%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 420. (explain)

GeForce GT 315		10000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 420		5600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4400 (79%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GT 315 is superior to the GeForce GT 420, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GT 315		5000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 420		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2200 (79%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the 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 card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out 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 of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.