GeForce GT 430 vs Radeon HD 5570

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 5570, which makes use of a 40 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 650 MHz. The DDR3 memory is set to run at a speed of 900 MHz on this card. It features 400(80x5) SPUs along with 20 TAUs and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

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

Texel Rate

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

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

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5570 is much (approximately 86%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GT 430, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 5570		5200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430		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 information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per 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 - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.