GeForce GT 430 vs Radeon HD 3650 512MB

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon HD 3650 512MB, which comes with a clock speed of 725 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 800 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is made up of 120(24x5) SPUs, 8 Texture Address Units, and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GT 430 will be 13% quicker than the Radeon HD 3650 512MB in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 430 is quite a bit (about 93%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3650 512MB. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3650 512MB is a better choice, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

Radeon HD 3650 512MB		2900 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430		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 maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is calculated 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 video card will be at handling 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 the video card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.