GeForce GT 430 vs Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 750 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 900 MHz on this particular card. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 TAUs 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 4870 1GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 90 Watts (150%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 4870 1GB should theoretically be a lot superior to the GeForce GT 430 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 86400 (300%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 1GB will be much (more or less 168%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GT 430. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		30000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 430		11200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18800 (168%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 1GB will be much (about 329%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 430, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		12000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9200 (329%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card 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 applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.