GeForce GT 420 vs Radeon HD 4730

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4730, which comes with a clock frequency of 700 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 900 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is made up of 640(128x5) SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 420		50 Watts
Radeon HD 4730		140 Watts
	Difference: 90 Watts (180%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4730 should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GT 420 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4730		57600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 420		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 28800 (100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4730 should be a lot (about 300%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 420. (explain)

Radeon HD 4730		22400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 420		5600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16800 (300%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4730 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 4730		5600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 420		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2800 (100%)

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 MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster 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 are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the 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 maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines 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, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.