GeForce GT 430 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 4870 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, which has clock speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		60 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 512MB		150 Watts
	Difference: 90 Watts (150%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4870 512MB is 300% quicker than the GeForce GT 430 (OEM) overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 86400 (300%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 512MB is quite a bit (approximately 168%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GT 430 (OEM). (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		11200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18800 (168%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4870 512MB is superior to the GeForce GT 430 (OEM), by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9200 (329%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, 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 are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core 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 one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could 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 clock speed of the card. 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 rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.