GeForce GT 430 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 7870

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 7870, which features GPU core speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1280 Stream Processors, 80 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		60 Watts
Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
	Difference: 115 Watts (192%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 7870 should in theory be a lot superior to the GeForce GT 430 (OEM) overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 124800 (433%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 will be a lot (more or less 614%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 430 (OEM). (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		11200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 68800 (614%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 is superior to the GeForce GT 430 (OEM), by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 29200 (1043%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core 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 output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.