GeForce GT 430 vs Radeon HD 7950 3GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7950 3GB, which features GPU clock speed of 800 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1250 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also features 1792 Stream Processors, 112 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 430		60 Watts
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 140 Watts (233%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 7950 3GB should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GT 430 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		240000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 211200 (733%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 3GB should be much (approximately 700%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 430. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		89600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 430		11200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 78400 (700%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 3GB is much (more or less 814%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 430, and also able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22800 (814%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses 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 faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.