GeForce GT 430 1GB vs Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, which has GPU clock speed of 625 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory set to run at 993 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 4850 512MB		110 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (83%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4850 512MB will be 121% quicker than the GeForce GT 430 1GB in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		63552 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 34752 (121%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 512MB should be a lot (approximately 123%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GT 430 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		25000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		11200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13800 (123%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 512MB should be a lot (approximately 257%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 430 1GB, and also capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 512MB		10000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7200 (257%)

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 data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. 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 lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.