GeForce GT 430 1GB vs Radeon HD 4870 X2

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4870 X2, which features GPU core speed of 750 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 800(160x5) Stream Processors, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 430 1GB		60 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 X2		350 Watts
	Difference: 290 Watts (483%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 4870 X2 should perform a lot faster than the GeForce GT 430 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		230400 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 201600 (700%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 X2 is much (approximately 436%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GT 430 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		60000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		11200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 48800 (436%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4870 X2 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 X2		24000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21200 (757%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.