GeForce GT 420 vs Radeon HD 5970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5970, which has a core clock speed of 725 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1600 SPUs, 160 TAUs, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 420		50 Watts
Radeon HD 5970		294 Watts
	Difference: 244 Watts (488%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5970 is 789% quicker than the GeForce GT 420 overall, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		256000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 420		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 227200 (789%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 will be much (more or less 4043%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 420. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		232000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 420		5600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 226400 (4043%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 is much (about 3214%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 420, and will be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970		92800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 420		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 90000 (3214%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, 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 per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video 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 number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.