GeForce GT 420 vs GeForce GT 430

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GT 430, which uses a 40 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 700 MHz. The GDDR3 memory runs at a speed of 900 MHz on this specific model. It features 96 SPUs along with 16 Texture Address Units and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 420		50 Watts
GeForce GT 430		60 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (20%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have the exact same memory bandwidth, so theoretically they should perform exactly the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 430 will be a lot (about 100%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 420. (explain)

GeForce GT 430		11200 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 420		5600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (100%)

Pixel Rate

Both cards have the exact same pixel rate, so in theory they should perform equally good at at AA, and be capable of handling the same resolutions. (explain)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.