GeForce GT 430 1GB vs Radeon HD 5570

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5570, which has GPU core speed of 650 MHz, and 512 MB of DDR3 RAM running at 900 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 400(80x5) SPUs, 20 Texture Address Units, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5570		43 Watts
GeForce GT 430 1GB		60 Watts
	Difference: 17 Watts (40%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have exactly the same bandwidth, so in theory they should have the same performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5570 will be a bit (more or less 16%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 430 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5570		13000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		11200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1800 (16%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5570 is a lot (more or less 86%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GT 430 1GB, and able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 5570		5200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (86%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.