In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the Nvidia GeForce GT 730 v3 Gigabyte 2GB Edition are significantly better than the Intel HD Graphics 4200 Desktop.

The GT 730 has a 500 MHz higher core clock speed and 12 more Texture Mapping Units than the Graphics 4200. This results in the GT 730 providing 10.4 GTexel/s better texturing performance. This still holds weight but shader performance is generally more relevant, particularly since both of these GPUs support at least DirectX 10.

The GT 730 has a 500 MHz higher core clock speed and 2 more Render Output Units than the Graphics 4200. This results in the GT 730 providing 2.4 GPixel/s better pixeling performance. However, both GPUs support DirectX 9 or above, and pixeling performance is only really relevant when comparing older cards.

The GT 730 was released less than a year after the Graphics 4200, and so they are likely to have similar driver support for optimizing performance when running the latest games.

The GT 730 has 2048 MB video memory, but the Graphics 4200 does not have an entry, so the two GPUs cannot be reliably compared in this area.

The GeForce GT 730 v3 Gigabyte 2GB Edition has 96 Shader Processing Units and the HD Graphics 4200 Desktop has 20. However, the actual shader performance of the GT 730 is 134 and the actual shader performance of the Graphics 4200 is 83. The GT 730 having 51 better shader performance and an altogether better performance when taking into account other relevant data means that the GT 730 delivers a marginally smoother and more efficient experience when processing graphical data than the Graphics 4200.

The Graphics 4200 transistor size technology is 18 nm (nanometers) smaller than the GT 730. This means that the Graphics 4200 is expected to run slightly cooler and achieve higher clock frequencies than the GT 730.

The GeForce GT 730 v3 Gigabyte 2GB Edition requires 49 Watts to run and the HD Graphics 4200 Desktop requires 20 Watts. We would recommend a PSU with at least 300 Watts for the GT 730. The GT 730 requires 29 Watts more than the Graphics 4200 to run. The difference is not significant enough for the GT 730 to have a noticeably larger impact on your yearly electricity bills than the Graphics 4200.