GeForce GT 430 1GB vs Radeon HD 7970

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 7970, which has a core clock frequency of 925 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1375 MHz. It also features a 384-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 430 1GB		60 Watts
Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
	Difference: 190 Watts (317%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7970 will be 817% faster than the GeForce GT 430 1GB in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 235200 (817%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 is much (approximately 957%) better at AF than the GeForce GT 430 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		11200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 107200 (957%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7970 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 26800 (957%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.