GeForce GT 430 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB, which features a GPU core clock speed of 625 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory set to run at 993 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		60 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		250 Watts
	Difference: 190 Watts (317%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB should be 341% quicker than the GeForce GT 430 (OEM) in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		127104 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 98304 (341%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB should be a lot (about 346%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 430 (OEM). (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		50000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		11200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 38800 (346%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		20000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17200 (614%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must 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 AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling 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 card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.