GeForce GT 430 1GB vs Radeon HD 4790

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 4790, which comes with a core clock frequency of 600 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 800 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is made up of 640(128x5) SPUs, 32 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 4790 should be much faster than the GeForce GT 430 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4790		102400 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 73600 (256%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4790 should be much (about 71%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GT 430 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4790		19200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		11200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8000 (71%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4790 will be much (approximately 243%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GT 430 1GB, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 4790		9600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6800 (243%)

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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 are applied 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 handling 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 could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.