GeForce GT 320 vs Radeon HD 3690/3830

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3690/3830, which comes with GPU core speed of 668 MHz, and 256 MB of GDDR3 memory set to run at 828 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 320		43 Watts
Radeon HD 3690/3830		75 Watts
	Difference: 32 Watts (74%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3690/3830 should be just a bit faster than the GeForce GT 320 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		26496 MB/sec
GeForce GT 320		25280 MB/sec
	Difference: 1216 (5%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 320 is a lot (approximately 21%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3690/3830. (explain)

GeForce GT 320		12960 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2272 (21%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3690/3830 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 320		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6368 (147%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, 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 number 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 speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core 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 is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.