GeForce GT 430 1GB vs Radeon HD 3650

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3650, which comes with GPU clock speed of 725 MHz, and 1024 MB of GDDR4 memory set to run at 800 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 120(24x5) Stream Processors, 8 TAUs, and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 430 1GB		60 Watts
Radeon HD 3650		78 Watts
	Difference: 18 Watts (30%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GT 430 1GB, in theory, should perform a little bit faster than the Radeon HD 3650 overall. (explain)

GeForce GT 430 1GB		28800 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3650		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (13%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 430 1GB will be much (more or less 93%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3650. (explain)

GeForce GT 430 1GB		11200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3650		5800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5400 (93%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3650 is a better choice, but not by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3650		2900 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.