GeForce GT 430 1GB vs GeForce GTX 660

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 660, which makes use of a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 980 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1502 MHz on this specific card. It features 960 SPUs as well as 80 TAUs and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 430 1GB		60 Watts
GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
	Difference: 80 Watts (133%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 660 is 401% quicker than the GeForce GT 430 1GB overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 115392 (401%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 is quite a bit (more or less 600%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GT 430 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		11200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 67200 (600%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 660 is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20720 (740%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. 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 potential to reach the maximum fill rate.