GeForce GT 430 vs Radeon R9 M270X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M270X, which has GPU clock speed of 725 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1125 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 640 SPUs, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 M270X will be 150% quicker than the GeForce GT 430 in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 M270X		72000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 43200 (150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M270X is quite a bit (about 159%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 430. (explain)

Radeon R9 M270X		29000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 430		11200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 17800 (159%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M270X is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 M270X		11600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8800 (314%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour 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 is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.