GeForce GT 430 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6950, which features GPU clock speed of 800 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1408 SPUs, 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		200 Watts
	Difference: 140 Watts (233%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6950 should theoretically be much superior to the GeForce GT 430 (OEM) in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 will be quite a bit (more or less 529%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 430 (OEM). (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core 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 rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.