GeForce GT 220 GDDR3 vs GeForce GT 420

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GT 420, which makes use of a 40 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 700 MHz. The GDDR3 memory works at a speed of 900 MHz on this specific card. It features 48 SPUs as well as 8 TAUs and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 420		50 Watts
GeForce GT 220 GDDR3		58 Watts
	Difference: 8 Watts (16%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GT 220 GDDR3 should in theory be just a bit better than the GeForce GT 420 overall. (explain)

GeForce GT 220 GDDR3		32384 MB/sec
GeForce GT 420		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3584 (12%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 220 GDDR3 will be a lot (approximately 79%) better at AF than the GeForce GT 420. (explain)

GeForce GT 220 GDDR3		10000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 420		5600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4400 (79%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GT 220 GDDR3 is superior to the GeForce GT 420, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GT 220 GDDR3		5000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 420		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2200 (79%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.