GeForce GT 430 1GB vs Radeon HD 4870 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, which features GPU clock speed of 750 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 800(160x5) SPUs, 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 512MB		150 Watts
	Difference: 90 Watts (150%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4870 512MB should be a lot faster than the GeForce GT 430 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 86400 (300%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 512MB should be a lot (approximately 168%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 430 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		30000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		11200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18800 (168%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4870 512MB is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB		12000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9200 (329%)

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core 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 output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.