GeForce GT 1030 vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which features GPU clock speed of 775 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR4 RAM running at 1125 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 320(64x5) SPUs, 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 3870 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 76 Watts (253%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3870 1GB is 46% quicker than the GeForce GT 1030 overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 1030		49152 MB/sec
	Difference: 22848 (46%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 1030 is much (more or less 226%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GT 1030		40480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28080 (226%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GT 1030 is superior to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GT 1030		20240 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7840 (63%)

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 max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write 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 - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.