GeForce GT 430 1GB vs Radeon HD 3850 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, which has core clock speeds of 668 MHz on the GPU, and 828 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 430 1GB		60 Watts
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		75 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 3850 512MB should theoretically perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GT 430 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 24192 (84%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 430 1GB should be a small bit (approximately 5%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 512MB should be a lot (about 282%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 430 1GB, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		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 largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 most pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core 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 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 get to the max fill rate.