GeForce GT 430 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 3690/3830

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3690/3830, which comes with clock speeds of 668 MHz on the GPU, and 828 MHz on the 256 MB of GDDR3 memory. It features 320(64x5) SPUs as well as 16 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		60 Watts
Radeon HD 3690/3830		75 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GT 430 (OEM) should be a bit faster than the Radeon HD 3690/3830 overall. (explain)

GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		28800 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		26496 MB/sec
	Difference: 2304 (9%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 430 (OEM) is a small bit (about 5%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 3690/3830. (explain)

GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		11200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 512 (5%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3690/3830 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon HD 3690/3830		10688 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.