GeForce GT 430 vs Radeon HD 3850 X2

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3850 X2, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 668 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM is set to run at a speed of 828 MHz on this specific card. It features 320(64x5) SPUs along with 16 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3850 X2 should perform much faster than the GeForce GT 430 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		105984 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 77184 (268%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 will be much (approximately 91%) better at AF than the GeForce GT 430. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 430		11200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 10176 (91%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 X2 is quite a bit (about 663%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GT 430, and capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 X2		21376 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 18576 (663%)

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 max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one 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 better the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

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