GeForce GT 430 vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 290, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1250 MHz on this card. It features 2560 SPUs as well as 160 Texture Address Units and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 430		60 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 240 Watts (400%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 290, in theory, should perform a lot faster than the GeForce GT 430 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 291200 (1011%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 is much (approximately 1043%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 430. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 430		11200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 116800 (1043%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 290 is superior to the GeForce GT 430, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 48400 (1729%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.