GeForce GT 430 vs Radeon HD 3870 512MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3870 512MB, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 775 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory set to run at 900 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is made up of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 430		60 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 512MB		106 Watts
	Difference: 46 Watts (77%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3870 512MB should perform much faster than the GeForce GT 430 in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		57600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 28800 (100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 512MB is a small bit (more or less 11%) better at AF than the GeForce GT 430. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 430		11200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1200 (11%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 512MB will be much (more or less 343%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 430, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 512MB		12400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9600 (343%)

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 MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must 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, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure 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 graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

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