GeForce GT 430 (OEM) vs GeForce GTX 660

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 660, which uses a 28 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 980 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1502 MHz on this specific model. It features 960 SPUs along with 80 Texture Address Units and 24 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 660 should theoretically be much superior to the GeForce GT 430 (OEM) in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 660 is much (approximately 600%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 430 (OEM). (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 660 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		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 past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 can be processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. 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 rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.