GeForce GT 430 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 7950 3GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7950 3GB, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1250 MHz on this specific model. It features 1792 SPUs as well as 112 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7950 3GB should in theory be much faster than the GeForce GT 430 (OEM) in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7950 3GB is quite a bit (about 700%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 430 (OEM). (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7950 3GB is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as 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, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.