GeForce GT 430 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 3650 256MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3650 256MB, which comes with GPU core speed of 725 MHz, and 256 MB of DDR2 memory set to run at 800 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 120(24x5) Stream Processors, 8 Texture Address Units, and 4 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		60 Watts
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		78 Watts
	Difference: 18 Watts (30%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GT 430 (OEM) should in theory be a little bit better than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB in general. (explain)

GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		28800 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (13%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 430 (OEM) is quite a bit (approximately 93%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3650 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		11200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 256MB		5800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5400 (93%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3650 256MB will be a bit (more or less 4%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 430 (OEM), and capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon HD 3650 256MB		2900 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, 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 number of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.