GeForce GT 430 vs GeForce GTX 660

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 660, which has a clock frequency of 980 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1502 MHz. It also features a 192-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 960 SPUs, 80 TAUs, and 24 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 660 should theoretically be much faster than the GeForce GT 430 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 is quite a bit (about 600%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 430. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 660 is superior to the GeForce GT 430, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430		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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.