GeForce GT 430 vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6970, which comes with clock speeds of 880 MHz on the GPU, and 1375 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1536 SPUs along with 96 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 430		60 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 190 Watts (317%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6970 should theoretically be a lot superior to the GeForce GT 430 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 147200 (511%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be a lot (about 654%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 430. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 430		11200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 73280 (654%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 is a lot (about 906%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 430, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 25360 (906%)

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 information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.