GeForce GT 430 1GB vs Radeon HD 5850

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 5850, which comes with a clock speed of 725 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 1440(288x5) SPUs, 72 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 430 1GB		60 Watts
Radeon HD 5850		151 Watts
	Difference: 91 Watts (152%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 5850 is 344% quicker than the GeForce GT 430 1GB overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 99200 (344%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5850 should be a lot (more or less 366%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 430 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		52200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		11200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 41000 (366%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5850 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 5850		23200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20400 (729%)

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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.