GeForce GT 430 1GB vs GeForce GTX 970

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 970, which uses a 28 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 1050 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1750 MHz on this card. It features 1664 SPUs as well as 104 Texture Address Units and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 430 1GB		60 Watts
GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
	Difference: 85 Watts (142%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 970 should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GT 430 1GB overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 195200 (678%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 is a lot (approximately 875%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 430 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		11200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 98000 (875%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970 is superior to the GeForce GT 430 1GB, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 64400 (2300%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 most pixels 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 number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.