GeForce GT 320 vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 5870, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1200 MHz on this particular card. It features 1600(320x5) SPUs as well as 80 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 320		43 Watts
Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
	Difference: 145 Watts (337%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5870 is 508% quicker than the GeForce GT 320 overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 320		25280 MB/sec
	Difference: 128320 (508%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 should be a lot (more or less 425%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 320. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 320		12960 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 55040 (425%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5870 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 320		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22880 (530%)

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core 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 rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.