GeForce GT 1030 vs Radeon HD 3870 512MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, which features clock speeds of 775 MHz on the GPU, and 900 MHz on the 512 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 1030		30 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		106 Watts
	Difference: 76 Watts (253%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3870 512MB should perform just a bit faster than the GeForce GT 1030 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 1030		49152 MB/sec
	Difference: 8448 (17%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 1030 should be quite a bit (about 226%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GT 1030		40480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28080 (226%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GT 1030 should be much (approximately 63%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GT 1030		20240 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7840 (63%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.