GeForce GT 430 1GB vs Radeon HD 6970

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6970, which has GPU core speed of 880 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1375 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1536 Stream Processors, 96 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 430 1GB		60 Watts
Radeon HD 6970		250 Watts
	Difference: 190 Watts (317%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 6970 should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GT 430 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		176000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 147200 (511%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be much (approximately 654%) better at AF than the GeForce GT 430 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		84480 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		11200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 73280 (654%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6970 should be quite a bit (more or less 906%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce GT 430 1GB, and able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6970		28160 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 25360 (906%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's 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 processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.