GeForce GT 430 vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 900 MHz on this particular model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 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 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 290 Watts (483%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 should be much faster than the GeForce GT 430 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 201600 (700%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 will be quite a bit (approximately 436%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 430. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 430		11200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 48800 (436%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 should be quite a bit (more or less 757%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 430, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21200 (757%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called 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, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.