GeForce GT 430 vs Radeon HD 3850 512MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3850 512MB, which has a GPU core clock speed of 668 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory set to run at 828 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 430		60 Watts
Radeon HD 3850 512MB		75 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3850 512MB will be 84% faster than the GeForce GT 430 overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		52992 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 24192 (84%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 430 should be a bit (about 5%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3850 512MB. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3850 512MB is a lot (more or less 282%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GT 430, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 512MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430		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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core 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 processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.