GeForce GT 430 vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which has GPU clock speed of 775 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR4 memory set to run at 1125 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 430		60 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 46 Watts (77%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 3870 1GB should be a lot faster than the GeForce GT 430 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB will be a little bit (approximately 11%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 430. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 1GB is superior to the GeForce GT 430, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430		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 (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better 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 maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as 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, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.