GeForce GT 430 1GB vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3850 X2, which comes with GPU clock speed of 668 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory running at 828 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 320(64x5) Stream Processors, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 should theoretically perform a lot faster than the GeForce GT 430 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 77184 (268%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 should be much (approximately 91%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 430 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		11200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10176 (91%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 is much (more or less 663%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 430 1GB, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 18576 (663%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.