GeForce GT 430 (OEM) vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 290, which features core clock speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2560 SPUs along with 160 TAUs and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 290 should be 1011% quicker than the GeForce GT 430 (OEM) overall, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 will be quite a bit (approximately 1043%) better at AF than the GeForce GT 430 (OEM). (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 290 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		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 max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card 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 a second.

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