GeForce GT 430 vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 280X, which features a GPU core clock speed of 850 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1500 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also features 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 280X should in theory be much faster than the GeForce GT 430 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X is a lot (more or less 871%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GT 430. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X will be much (more or less 871%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 430, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430		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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's 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 are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.