GeForce GT 420 vs GeForce GTX 590

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 590, which comes with GPU clock speed of 607 MHz, and 1536 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 855 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is comprised of 512 Stream Processors, 64 TAUs, and 48 Raster Operation 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

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 590 should in theory be much superior to the GeForce GT 420 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 590 is quite a bit (more or less 1287%) faster with regards to anisotropic 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 using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 590 is superior to the GeForce GT 420, by a large margin. (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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better 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 number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling 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 record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.