GeForce GT 430 vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5870, which features clock speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1600(320x5) SPUs as well as 80 TAUs and 32 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 5870		188 Watts
	Difference: 128 Watts (213%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 5870 should theoretically be a lot better than the GeForce GT 430 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 124800 (433%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 will be much (about 507%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GT 430. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 430		11200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 56800 (507%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5870 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24400 (871%)

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

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 are processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at 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 chip can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.