GeForce GT 430 1GB vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 280X, which features a GPU core clock speed of 850 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1500 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is made up of 2048 Stream Processors, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 430 1GB		60 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 190 Watts (317%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 280X should theoretically be a lot better than the GeForce GT 430 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 259200 (900%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X should be quite a bit (about 871%) better at AF than the GeForce GT 430 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		11200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 97600 (871%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X should be a lot (more or less 871%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 430 1GB, and also able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24400 (871%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.