GeForce GT 430 vs Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, which comes with a clock frequency of 625 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 993 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 430		60 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 512MB		110 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (83%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4850 512MB should theoretically be a lot superior to the GeForce GT 430 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 34752 (121%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 512MB should be a lot (about 123%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 430. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 430		11200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13800 (123%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 512MB should be quite a bit (about 257%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GT 430, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7200 (257%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. 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 rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.