GeForce GT 430 1GB vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 5870, which has core clock speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1600(320x5) SPUs as well as 80 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 430 1GB		60 Watts
Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
	Difference: 128 Watts (213%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5870 should perform a lot faster than the GeForce GT 430 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 124800 (433%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 should be much (more or less 507%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 430 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		11200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 56800 (507%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5870 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24400 (871%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.