GeForce GT 420 vs Radeon HD 3870 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, which comes with a core clock frequency of 775 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It features 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 420		50 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		106 Watts
	Difference: 56 Watts (112%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3870 512MB should be 100% faster than the GeForce GT 420 in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 420		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 28800 (100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 512MB is a lot (about 121%) better at AF than the GeForce GT 420. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 420		5600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6800 (121%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 512MB is superior to the GeForce GT 420, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 420		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9600 (343%)

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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.