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

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 668 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM works at a speed of 828 MHz on this card. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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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 speaking, the Radeon HD 3850 1GB should be 84% quicker than the GeForce GT 430 (OEM) in general, because of its higher data rate. (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 a small bit (about 5%) better at anisotropic filtering 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 a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 1GB is the winner, by a large margin. (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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better 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 can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.