GeForce GT 420 vs GeForce GTS 150

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTS 150, which comes with core speeds of 740 MHz on the GPU, and 500 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 128 SPUs as well as 64 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 420		50 Watts
GeForce GTS 150		141 Watts
	Difference: 91 Watts (182%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTS 150 should in theory be a small bit better than the GeForce GT 420 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTS 150		32000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 420		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTS 150 will be quite a bit (approximately 746%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GT 420. (explain)

GeForce GTS 150		47360 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 420		5600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 41760 (746%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTS 150 will be a lot (approximately 323%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 420, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTS 150		11840 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 420		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9040 (323%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.