GeForce GT 420 vs GeForce GTX 470

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 470, which has clock speeds of 607 MHz on the GPU, and 837 MHz on the 1280 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 448 SPUs as well as 56 TAUs and 40 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 420		50 Watts
GeForce GTX 470		215 Watts
	Difference: 165 Watts (330%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 470 should perform a lot faster than the GeForce GT 420 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
GeForce GT 420		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 105120 (365%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 should be much (more or less 507%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 420. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 420		5600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28392 (507%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 470 is a lot (approximately 767%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 420, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 420		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21480 (767%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core 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 is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.