GeForce GT 430 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5850, which uses a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 725 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1000 MHz on this card. It features 1440(288x5) SPUs as well as 72 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		60 Watts
Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
	Difference: 91 Watts (152%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 5850 will be 344% quicker than the GeForce GT 430 (OEM) in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 99200 (344%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 is a lot (more or less 366%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GT 430 (OEM). (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		11200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 41000 (366%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 will be much (about 729%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce GT 430 (OEM), and also able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20400 (729%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.