GeForce GT 430 vs Radeon R7 240

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R7 240, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 730 MHz. The DDR3 memory is set to run at a frequency of 900 MHz on this specific card. It features 320 SPUs along with 20 TAUs and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 240		30 Watts
GeForce GT 430		60 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have the exact same bandwidth, so in theory they should perform the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 240 is much (more or less 30%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 430. (explain)

Radeon R7 240		14600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 430		11200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3400 (30%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R7 240 is much (about 109%) better at AA than the GeForce GT 430, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R7 240		5840 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3040 (109%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.