GeForce GT 430 vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 625 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM works at a speed of 993 MHz on this specific card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 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 4850 X2 512MB		250 Watts
	Difference: 190 Watts (317%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB should perform much faster than the GeForce GT 430 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		127104 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 98304 (341%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB should be quite a bit (approximately 346%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GT 430. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		50000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 430		11200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 38800 (346%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB should be much (more or less 614%) better at AA than the GeForce GT 430, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		20000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17200 (614%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write 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 clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.