ATI Radeon X1300 64-bit vs HV GeForce 7100GS LP Fox 256MB DDR2 (3.3ns)

There are two factors that affect the maximum theoretical pixel fillrate. These are the number of ROPs and graphics clock speed. The ATI Radeon X1300 64-bit has a very significant lead here, as it operates at higher frequency and has twice as many Raster Operations Pipelines (ROPs). Better maximum pixel fill rate allows more pixels to be drawn on screen per second, which results in increased performance, unless the card is limited by something else, such as texture mapping or available memory bandwidth.

Pixel fill rate was an essential parameter years ago, but not so much these days. Texture fill rate has more significance in modern games. This fillrate is proportional to graphics clock and the number of TMUs (Texture Mapping Units). The ATI Radeon X1300 64-bit has an edge here, because it runs at higher frequency, and both cards have the same number of TMUs. Better maximum texture fill rate means that the graphics card can utilize more sophisticated 3D effects and/or apply more textures to each textured picture element, which improves visual appearance of games and generated images.

To speed up processing, the GPUs store 3D scene data, textures and intermediate data, used for image generation, in on-board memory. The video memory usually has much higher bandwidth than system RAM, and more bandwidth allows the GPU to run at higher display resolutions, use larger and more detailed textures, and apply more complex 3D effects and filters. The bandwidth depends on several components, like memory type, speed, and memory interface width. Specifically, higher memory bandwidth of the HV GeForce 7100GS LP Fox 256MB DDR2 (3.3ns) graphics card is a result of better and higher clocked memory.