GeForce GT 430 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which has core clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1408 SPUs as well as 88 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		60 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 140 Watts (233%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6950 2GB should in theory be much better than the GeForce GT 430 (OEM) overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 131200 (456%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB should be much (more or less 529%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 430 (OEM). (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		11200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 59200 (529%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 2GB is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22800 (814%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of 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 this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate 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 quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.