GeForce GT 430 1GB vs Radeon HD 3690/3830

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3690/3830, which has a GPU core clock speed of 668 MHz, and 256 MB of GDDR3 RAM set to run at 828 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 430 1GB		60 Watts
Radeon HD 3690/3830		75 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GT 430 1GB should perform a small bit faster than the Radeon HD 3690/3830 overall. (explain)

GeForce GT 430 1GB		28800 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		26496 MB/sec
	Difference: 2304 (9%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 430 1GB is a little bit (approximately 5%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3690/3830. (explain)

GeForce GT 430 1GB		11200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 512 (5%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3690/3830 will be a lot (more or less 282%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GT 430 1GB, and also capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics 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 most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.