GeForce GT 430 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 3650 512MB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon HD 3650 512MB, which uses a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 725 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM works at a speed of 800 MHz on this particular card. It features 120(24x5) SPUs as well as 8 Texture Address Units and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		60 Watts
Radeon HD 3650 512MB		78 Watts
	Difference: 18 Watts (30%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GT 430 (OEM) should theoretically perform just a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3650 512MB overall. (explain)

GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		28800 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3650 512MB		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 3200 (13%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 430 (OEM) will be a lot (about 93%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3650 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		11200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3650 512MB		5800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 5400 (93%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3650 512MB is a better choice, but only just. (explain)

Radeon HD 3650 512MB		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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once 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, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.