GeForce GT 230 vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 280X, which features core speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 230		65 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 185 Watts (285%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 280X is 650% quicker than the GeForce GT 230 overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 230		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 249600 (650%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X should be quite a bit (about 1136%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 230. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 230		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 100000 (1136%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X will be quite a bit (about 518%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 230, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 230		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22800 (518%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the 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 most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.