GeForce GT 430 1GB vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 270X, which features a clock frequency of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1400 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 430 1GB		60 Watts
Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
	Difference: 120 Watts (200%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 270X should be 522% quicker than the GeForce GT 430 1GB overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 150400 (522%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X should be a lot (more or less 614%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 430 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		11200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 68800 (614%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 270X is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 29200 (1043%)

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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory per 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 - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.