GeForce GT 430 1GB vs Radeon HD 6950

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 6950, which has a core clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1408 SPUs, 88 TAUs, 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 6950		200 Watts
	Difference: 140 Watts (233%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 6950 should be much faster than the GeForce GT 430 1GB overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 6950 is much (approximately 529%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GT 430 1GB. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 6950 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 6950		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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of 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 number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.