GeForce GT 430 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 5870

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5870, which features a clock frequency of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1200 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is comprised of 1600(320x5) SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		60 Watts
Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
	Difference: 128 Watts (213%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 5870, in theory, should be a lot faster than the GeForce GT 430 (OEM) in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 124800 (433%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 will be a lot (approximately 507%) better at AF than the GeForce GT 430 (OEM). (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		11200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 56800 (507%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 is much (approximately 871%) better at AA than the GeForce GT 430 (OEM), and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24400 (871%)

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 data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.