GeForce GT 430 vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 6850, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 775 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 960 Stream Processors, 48 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 430		60 Watts
Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
	Difference: 67 Watts (112%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 6850 should in theory be a lot better than the GeForce GT 430 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 99200 (344%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 should be much (more or less 232%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GT 430. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 430		11200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 26000 (232%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6850 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22000 (786%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.