GeForce GT 1030 vs Radeon HD 3850 256MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, which has core speeds of 668 MHz on the GPU, and 828 MHz on the 256 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 1030		30 Watts
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		75 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (150%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 3850 256MB should theoretically be just a bit better than the GeForce GT 1030 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
GeForce GT 1030		49152 MB/sec
	Difference: 3840 (8%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 1030 is a lot (more or less 279%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GT 1030		40480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 29792 (279%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GT 1030 is superior to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GT 1030		20240 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		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 largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at 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 the video card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.