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

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 7950 3GB, which features a core clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also features a 384-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 1792 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

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

In theory, the Radeon HD 7950 3GB should be 733% faster than the GeForce GT 430 (OEM) overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (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 much (about 700%) faster with regards to 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

The Radeon HD 7950 3GB will be quite a bit (about 814%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce GT 430 (OEM), and also should be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.