GeForce GT 430 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 3850 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, which comes with core speeds of 668 MHz on the GPU, and 828 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		60 Watts
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		75 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 3850 1GB should be a lot faster than the GeForce GT 430 (OEM) overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		52992 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 24192 (84%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 430 (OEM) is just a bit (more or less 5%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		11200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 512 (5%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 1GB is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7888 (282%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.