GeForce GT 430 vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which features a clock frequency of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 900 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 800(160x5) SPUs, 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 theoretically be a lot better than 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 much (more or less 436%) faster with regards to 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 will be much (more or less 757%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 430, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (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 max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.