GeForce GT 430 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 3870 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 775 MHz. The GDDR3 memory works at a speed of 900 MHz on this particular card. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		60 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		106 Watts
	Difference: 46 Watts (77%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3870 512MB should perform much faster than the GeForce GT 430 (OEM) overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 28800 (100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 512MB is a bit (more or less 11%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GT 430 (OEM). (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		11200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1200 (11%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 512MB is quite a bit (approximately 343%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce GT 430 (OEM), and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9600 (343%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.