GeForce GT 430 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 3650 256MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3650 256MB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 725 MHz. The DDR2 RAM runs at a speed of 800 MHz on this particular model. It features 120(24x5) SPUs along with 8 Texture Address Units and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		60 Watts
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		78 Watts
	Difference: 18 Watts (30%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GT 430 (OEM) should be a little bit faster than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		28800 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (13%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 430 (OEM) should be quite a bit (more or less 93%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		11200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		5800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5400 (93%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3650 256MB is just a bit (approximately 4%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 430 (OEM), and will be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 3650 256MB		2900 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 100 (4%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, 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 can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.