GeForce 9800 GTX vs GeForce GT 430 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GT 430 1GB, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 700 MHz. The GDDR3 memory is set to run at a speed of 900 MHz on this card. It features 96 SPUs along with 16 TAUs and 4 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 430 1GB		60 Watts
GeForce 9800 GTX		140 Watts
	Difference: 80 Watts (133%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 9800 GTX will be 144% faster than the GeForce GT 430 1GB in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX		70400 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 41600 (144%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GTX will be a lot (approximately 286%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 430 1GB. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX		43200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		11200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32000 (286%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce 9800 GTX is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GTX		10800 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8000 (286%)

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 transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.