GeForce GT 430 vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which has GPU clock speed of 750 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 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 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 290 Watts (483%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 should in theory be much superior to the GeForce GT 430 overall. (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 (about 436%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GT 430. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4870 X2 is the winner, and very much so. (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: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.