GeForce GT 430 (OEM) vs Radeon HD 3470 512MB

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon HD 3470 512MB, which features GPU clock speed of 800 MHz, and 512 MB of GDDR3 memory running at 950 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 40(8x5) Stream Processors, 4 Texture Address Units, and 4 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3470 512MB is 6% quicker than the GeForce GT 430 (OEM) in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 3470 512MB		30400 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 1600 (6%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 430 (OEM) is a lot (about 250%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB. (explain)

GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		11200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8000 (250%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3470 512MB is a better choice, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 400 (14%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's 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 also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.