GeForce GT 320 vs Radeon HD 4650 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4650 512MB, which comes with GPU core speed of 600 MHz, and 512 MB of DDR2 memory running at 500 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 32 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 320		43 Watts
Radeon HD 4650 512MB		55 Watts
	Difference: 12 Watts (28%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GT 320 should in theory perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 4650 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GT 320		25280 MB/sec
Radeon HD 4650 512MB		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 9280 (58%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4650 512MB will be quite a bit (about 48%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 320. (explain)

Radeon HD 4650 512MB		19200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 320		12960 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6240 (48%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4650 512MB is superior to the GeForce GT 320, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

Radeon HD 4650 512MB		4800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 320		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 480 (11%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.