GeForce GT 430 vs Radeon HD 4890 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4890 1GB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 975 MHz on this specific model. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 430		60 Watts
Radeon HD 4890 1GB		190 Watts
	Difference: 130 Watts (217%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 4890 1GB should theoretically perform much faster than the GeForce GT 430 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 1GB		124800 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 96000 (333%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4890 1GB is much (more or less 257%) better at AF than the GeForce GT 430. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 1GB		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 430		11200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28800 (257%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4890 1GB is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 4890 1GB		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13200 (471%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units 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 also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.