GeForce GT 430 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 3850 1GB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3850 1GB, which has a clock speed of 668 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 828 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		60 Watts
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		75 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3850 1GB should perform much faster than the GeForce GT 430 (OEM) overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		52992 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 24192 (84%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 430 (OEM) will be a bit (about 5%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 1GB. (explain)

GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		11200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 512 (5%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 1GB should be quite a bit (more or less 282%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce GT 430 (OEM), and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 1GB		10688 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory per 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 memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.