GeForce GT 430 vs Radeon HD 7850

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 7850, which features a core clock frequency of 860 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1200 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 1024 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 430		60 Watts
Radeon HD 7850		130 Watts
	Difference: 70 Watts (117%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 7850 should be a lot faster than the GeForce GT 430 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 124800 (433%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 should be much (approximately 391%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 430. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 430		11200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 43840 (391%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 should be much (about 883%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 430, and also capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24720 (883%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 are applied in one second. This number 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 card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. 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 rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.