GeForce GT 430 1GB vs GeForce GTX 580 3GB

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 580 3GB, which features core speeds of 772 MHz on the GPU, and 1002 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 512 SPUs as well as 64 Texture Address Units and 48 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 430 1GB		60 Watts
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
	Difference: 184 Watts (307%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 580 3GB should perform much faster than the GeForce GT 430 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 163584 (568%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB is a lot (about 341%) better at AF than the GeForce GT 430 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		11200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 38208 (341%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 3GB is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 34256 (1223%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called 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, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.