GeForce GT 430 1GB vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 5870, which has GPU core speed of 850 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1600(320x5) SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, 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 5870		188 Watts
	Difference: 128 Watts (213%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 5870 should be 433% quicker than the GeForce GT 430 1GB in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 will be a lot (about 507%) better at AF 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

The Radeon HD 5870 is much (approximately 871%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce GT 430 1GB, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.