GeForce GT 430 1GB vs Radeon HD 4850 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4850 512MB, which has a core clock speed of 625 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 993 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, 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

The Radeon HD 4850 512MB, in theory, should be much faster than the GeForce GT 430 1GB overall. (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 is quite a bit (about 123%) more effective at anisotropic filtering 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 will be quite a bit (about 257%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GT 430 1GB, and also should be 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 maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units 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 per second.

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