GeForce GT 430 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB, which features core speeds of 825 MHz on the GPU, and 1126 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR4 memory. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB should theoretically be much better than the GeForce GT 430 (OEM) overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		144128 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 115328 (400%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB is quite a bit (about 136%) better at AF than the GeForce GT 430 (OEM). (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		11200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15200 (136%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB is much (more or less 843%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 430 (OEM), and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB		26400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 23600 (843%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.