GeForce GT 420 vs GeForce GTX 590

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 590, which has core clock speeds of 607 MHz on the GPU, and 855 MHz on the 1536 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 512 SPUs along with 64 Texture Address Units and 48 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 420		50 Watts
GeForce GTX 590		365 Watts
	Difference: 315 Watts (630%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 590 will be 1040% quicker than the GeForce GT 420 in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		328320 MB/sec
GeForce GT 420		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 299520 (1040%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 590 is a lot (more or less 1287%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GT 420. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		77696 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 420		5600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 72096 (1287%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 590 is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		58272 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 420		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 55472 (1981%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock 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 fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.