GeForce GT 430 1GB vs Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, which comes with a core clock speed of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 900 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It features 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 430 1GB		60 Watts
Radeon HD 4870 1GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 90 Watts (150%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4870 1GB should in theory be much better than the GeForce GT 430 1GB in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4870 1GB should be much (more or less 168%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 430 1GB. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4870 1GB is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 1GB		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 max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.