GeForce GT 430 1GB vs Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 625 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory running at 993 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 430 1GB		60 Watts
Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		250 Watts
	Difference: 190 Watts (317%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB should in theory be much better than the GeForce GT 430 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		127104 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 98304 (341%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB is quite a bit (about 346%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GT 430 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		50000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		11200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 38800 (346%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB is much (approximately 614%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce GT 430 1GB, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 4850 X2 512MB		20000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17200 (614%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.