GeForce GT 1030 vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 775 MHz. The GDDR4 memory runs at a speed of 1125 MHz on this model. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 1030		30 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 76 Watts (253%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3870 1GB should perform a lot faster than the GeForce GT 1030 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 1030		49152 MB/sec
	Difference: 22848 (46%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 1030 should be much (more or less 226%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GT 1030		40480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28080 (226%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GT 1030 should be a lot (more or less 63%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, and should be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GT 1030		20240 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		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 max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.