GeForce GT 430 1GB vs Radeon HD 6950 2GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 6950 2GB, which features a GPU core clock speed of 800 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1250 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 1408 Stream Processors, 88 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 430 1GB		60 Watts
Radeon HD 6950 2GB		200 Watts
	Difference: 140 Watts (233%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 6950 2GB should be a lot faster than the GeForce GT 430 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 131200 (456%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB is much (more or less 529%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 430 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		70400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		11200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 59200 (529%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 2GB is a lot (approximately 814%) better at AA than the GeForce GT 430 1GB, and capable of handling higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950 2GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22800 (814%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs 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 fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.