GeForce GT 420 vs Radeon HD 4670 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4670 512MB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 750 MHz. The GDDR4/GDDR3/DDR3/DDR2 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1000 MHz on this specific model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 32 TAUs and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 420		50 Watts
Radeon HD 4670 512MB		70 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (40%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 4670 512MB should in theory be a small bit better than the GeForce GT 420 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4670 512MB		32000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 420		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (11%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4670 512MB will be quite a bit (approximately 329%) better at AF than the GeForce GT 420. (explain)

Radeon HD 4670 512MB		24000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 420		5600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18400 (329%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4670 512MB is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 4670 512MB		6000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 420		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3200 (114%)

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 max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, 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 is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.