GeForce GT 430 1GB vs Radeon HD 3470 256MB

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon HD 3470 256MB, which has a core clock speed of 800 MHz and a DDR2 memory speed of 950 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 40(8x5) SPUs, 4 Texture Address Units, and 4 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 3470 256MB should be 6% faster than the GeForce GT 430 1GB in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 3470 256MB		30400 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 1600 (6%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GT 430 1GB will be a lot (more or less 250%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 3470 256MB. (explain)

GeForce GT 430 1GB		11200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 8000 (250%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon HD 3470 256MB is superior to the GeForce GT 430 1GB, though not by far. (explain)

Radeon HD 3470 256MB		3200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		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 largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video 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 amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.