GeForce GT 420 vs GeForce GTX 260

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 260, which uses a 65 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 576 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM is set to run at a speed of 999 MHz on this specific card. It features 192 SPUs as well as 64 Texture Address Units and 28 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 420		50 Watts
GeForce GTX 260		182 Watts
	Difference: 132 Watts (264%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 260 should be 289% faster than the GeForce GT 420 overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		111888 MB/sec
GeForce GT 420		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 83088 (289%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 should be much (about 558%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GT 420. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 420		5600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31264 (558%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 260 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		16128 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 420		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13328 (476%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock 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 can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out 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 also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.