GeForce GT 1030 vs Radeon HD 3850 1GB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, which features a GPU core clock speed of 668 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR3 RAM running at 828 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 1030		30 Watts
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		75 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (150%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 3850 1GB should in theory be just a bit better than the GeForce GT 1030 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		52992 MB/sec
GeForce GT 1030		49152 MB/sec
	Difference: 3840 (8%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 1030 should be quite a bit (approximately 279%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GT 1030		40480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 29792 (279%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GT 1030 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GT 1030		20240 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9552 (89%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better 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 are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, 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 most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.