GeForce GT 430 1GB vs Radeon HD 4870 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4870 1GB, which has core speeds of 750 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 800(160x5) SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 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 4870 1GB		150 Watts
	Difference: 90 Watts (150%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4870 1GB should theoretically be much superior to 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 is much (approximately 168%) better at AF 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

The Radeon HD 4870 1GB will be quite a bit (approximately 329%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 430 1GB, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.