GeForce 8800 GS vs GeForce GT 420

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GT 420, which comes with core speeds of 700 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 48 SPUs as well as 8 Texture Address Units and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 420		50 Watts
GeForce 8800 GS		105 Watts
	Difference: 55 Watts (110%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce 8800 GS should be a lot faster than the GeForce GT 420 overall. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GS		38400 MB/sec
GeForce GT 420		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 9600 (33%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 GS is quite a bit (more or less 371%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 420. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GS		26400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 420		5600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 20800 (371%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce 8800 GS is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce 8800 GS		6600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 420		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3800 (136%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card 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 processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could 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 clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.