3D equilibrium codes are vital for stellarator design and operation, and
high-accuracy equilibria are also necessary for stability studies. This paper
details comparisons of two 3D equilibrium codes, VMEC, which uses a
steepest-descent algorithm to reach a minimum-energy plasma state, and DESC,
which minimizes the MHD force error in real space directly. Accuracy as
measured by final plasma energy and satisfaction of MHD force balance, as well
as other metrics, will be presented for each code, along with the computation
time. It is shown that DESC is able to achieve more accurate solutions,
especially near-axis. DESC's global Fourier-Zernike basis also yields the
solution everywhere in the plasma volume, not just on discrete flux surfaces.
Further, DESC can compute the same accuracy solution as VMEC in an order of
magnitude less time