GeForce GT 430 vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6850, which has core speeds of 775 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 960 SPUs as well as 48 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator 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

In theory, the Radeon HD 6850 will be 344% quicker than the GeForce GT 430 in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 should be quite a bit (more or less 232%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 430. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6850 is quite a bit (more or less 786%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce GT 430, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video 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 most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.