GeForce GT 430 vs Radeon HD 4790

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 4790 should perform much faster than the GeForce GT 430 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4790 will be a lot (about 71%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 430. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 4790 is superior to the GeForce GT 430, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 4790		9600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430		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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.