GeForce GT 1030 vs Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 825 MHz. The GDDR3 memory is set to run at a frequency of 900 MHz on this specific card. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB is 134% quicker than the GeForce GT 1030 overall, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		115200 MB/sec
GeForce GT 1030		49152 MB/sec
	Difference: 66048 (134%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 1030 is a lot (approximately 53%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GT 1030		40480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14080 (53%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 1030		20240 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6160 (30%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses 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 are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, 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 maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core 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 fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.