GeForce GT 430 1GB vs Radeon HD 3870 1GB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3870 1GB, which has a clock speed of 775 MHz and a GDDR4 memory speed of 1125 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It features 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 430 1GB		60 Watts
Radeon HD 3870 1GB		106 Watts
	Difference: 46 Watts (77%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 3870 1GB should be much faster than the GeForce GT 430 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		72000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 43200 (150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 3870 1GB is a small bit (approximately 11%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GT 430 1GB. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		11200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 1200 (11%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3870 1GB is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon HD 3870 1GB		12400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.