GeForce GT 430 vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which has a clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It features 1408 SPUs, 88 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 430		60 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 140 Watts (233%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6950 2GB should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the GeForce GT 430 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 131200 (456%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB should be a lot (more or less 529%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 430. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 430		11200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 59200 (529%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB is much (more or less 814%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 430, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430		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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum 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 better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video 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 the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.