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GeForce GT 1030 vs Radeon HD 3850 1GB

Intro

The GeForce GT 1030 features core clock speeds of 1265 MHz on the GPU, and 1502 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 384 SPUs along with 32 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, which has a core clock frequency of 668 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 828 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is made up of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

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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

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 3850 1GB should perform a small bit faster 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 will be a lot (more or less 279%) more effective at texture filtering 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

The GeForce GT 1030 will be quite a bit (about 89%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (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

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GeForce GT 1030

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Radeon HD 3850 1GB

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Specifications

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Model	GeForce GT 1030	Radeon HD 3850 1GB
Manufacturer	nVidia	AMD
Year	May 2017	Nov 19, 2007
Code Name	GP108-300	RV670 PRO
Memory	2048 MB	1024 MB
Core Speed	1265 MHz	668 MHz
Memory Speed	6008 MHz	1656 MHz
Power (Max TDP)	30 watts	75 watts
Bandwidth	49152 MB/sec	52992 MB/sec
Texel Rate	40480 Mtexels/sec	10688 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate	20240 Mpixels/sec	10688 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders	384	320(64x5)
Texture Mapping Units	32	16
Render Output Units	16	16
Bus Type	GDDR5	GDDR3
Bus Width	64-bit	256-bit
Fab Process	16 nm	55 nm
Transistors	3300 million	(Unknown) million
Bus	PCIe 3.0 x16	PCIe 2.0 x16/AGP 8x
DirectX Version	DirectX 12.0	DirectX 10.1
OpenGL Version	OpenGL 4.5	OpenGL 3.0

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock 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 processed in a second.

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

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