GeForce 9800 GX2 vs GeForce GT 430 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GT 430 1GB, which comes with a clock frequency of 700 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It features 96 SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 4 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 430 1GB		60 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 137 Watts (228%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 9800 GX2 is 344% quicker than the GeForce GT 430 1GB overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 99200 (344%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 will be much (approximately 586%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 430 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		11200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 65600 (586%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 will be much (approximately 586%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GT 430 1GB, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16400 (586%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to its 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 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 of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.