GeForce GT 430 1GB vs Radeon HD 3850 256MB

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 3850 256MB, which comes with a core clock speed of 668 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 828 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 320(64x5) SPUs, 16 Texture Address Units, 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 3850 256MB		75 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon HD 3850 256MB should in theory be a lot better than the GeForce GT 430 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		52992 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 24192 (84%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 430 1GB will be just a bit (about 5%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 3850 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GT 430 1GB		11200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 512 (5%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3850 256MB is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3850 256MB		10688 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.