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GeForce GT 230 vs GeForce GT 430

Intro

The GeForce GT 230 uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 550 MHz. The DDR3 RAM works at a speed of 800 MHz on this model. It features 32 SPUs as well as 16 TAUs and 8 ROPs.

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GT 430, which features clock speeds of 700 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 96 SPUs as well as 16 TAUs and 4 Rasterization Operator Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 430		60 Watts
GeForce GT 230		65 Watts
	Difference: 5 Watts (8%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GT 230, in theory, should perform much faster than the GeForce GT 430 in general. (explain)

GeForce GT 230		38400 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 9600 (33%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 430 should be much (approximately 27%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 230. (explain)

GeForce GT 430		11200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 230		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (27%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GT 230 should be quite a bit (more or less 57%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce GT 430, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GT 230		4400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1600 (57%)

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

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GeForce GT 230

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GeForce GT 430

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Specifications

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Model	GeForce GT 230	GeForce GT 430
Manufacturer	nVidia	nVidia
Year	October 2009	October 2010
Code Name	GT218	GF108
Memory	1536 MB	512 MB
Core Speed	550 MHz	700 MHz
Memory Speed	1600 MHz	1800 MHz
Power (Max TDP)	65 watts	60 watts
Bandwidth	38400 MB/sec	28800 MB/sec
Texel Rate	8800 Mtexels/sec	11200 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	4400 Mpixels/sec	2800 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders	32	96
Texture Mapping Units	16	16
Render Output Units	8	4
Bus Type	DDR3	GDDR3
Bus Width	192-bit	128-bit
Fab Process	40 nm	40 nm
Transistors	260 million	585 million
Bus	PCIe 2.0	PCIe x16
DirectX Version	DirectX 10.1	DirectX 11
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 3.2	OpenGL 4.1

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 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 processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs 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 output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.

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