GeForce GT 430 vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5850, which has a clock speed of 725 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1440(288x5) SPUs, 72 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 430		60 Watts
Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
	Difference: 91 Watts (152%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 5850 should theoretically be much better than the GeForce GT 430 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 99200 (344%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 should be a lot (about 366%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 430. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 430		11200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 41000 (366%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5850 is superior to the GeForce GT 430, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20400 (729%)

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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.