GeForce GT 420 vs Radeon RX 580

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 580, which uses a 14 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1257 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 2000 MHz on this specific card. It features 2304 SPUs along with 144 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 420		50 Watts
Radeon RX 580		185 Watts
	Difference: 135 Watts (270%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon RX 580, in theory, should perform much faster than the GeForce GT 420 overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		262144 MB/sec
GeForce GT 420		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 233344 (810%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 580 will be a lot (about 3132%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GT 420. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		181008 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 420		5600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 175408 (3132%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon RX 580 is superior to the GeForce GT 420, by far. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		40224 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 420		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 37424 (1337%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number 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 output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.