GeForce GT 420 vs GeForce GTX 480

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 480, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 700 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 924 MHz on this card. It features 480 SPUs as well as 60 Texture Address Units and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 420		50 Watts
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 200 Watts (400%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 480 should theoretically be much superior to the GeForce GT 420 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
GeForce GT 420		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 148608 (516%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 should be much (about 650%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 420. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 420		5600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 36400 (650%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 480 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 420		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 30800 (1100%)

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 max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.