GeForce GT 430 (OEM) vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 280, which comes with a core clock frequency of 933 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also features a 384-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1792 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 280 should be 733% faster than the GeForce GT 430 (OEM) overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 211200 (733%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 will be much (more or less 833%) better at AF than the GeForce GT 430 (OEM). (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		11200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 93296 (833%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430 (OEM)		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 27056 (966%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be transferred over 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 it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a 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 speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few 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.