GeForce GT 430 vs Radeon HD 3470 512MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3470 512MB, which makes use of a 55 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR3 memory runs at a speed of 950 MHz on this card. It features 40(8x5) SPUs along with 4 TAUs and 4 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon HD 3470 512MB should be a bit faster than the GeForce GT 430 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 430 will be quite a bit (about 250%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3470 512MB. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 3470 512MB will be just a bit (approximately 14%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 430, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon HD 3470 512MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430		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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.