GeForce GT 430 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which has clock speeds of 775 MHz on the GPU, and 1125 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR4 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 430 (OEM)		60 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 46 Watts (77%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3870 1GB is 150% quicker than the GeForce GT 430 (OEM) in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 43200 (150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB should be a little bit (approximately 11%) better at AF than the GeForce GT 430 (OEM). (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		11200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1200 (11%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB is a lot (about 343%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GT 430 (OEM), and also will be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		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 (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant 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 max fill rate.