GeForce 830M vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 280, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 933 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1250 MHz on this card. It features 1792 SPUs as well as 112 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 830M		25 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 225 Watts (900%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 280 should in theory be much better than the GeForce 830M in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
GeForce 830M		14400 MB/sec
	Difference: 225600 (1567%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 will be much (about 535%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 830M. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 830M		16464 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 88032 (535%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 is quite a bit (approximately 263%) more effective at AA than the GeForce 830M, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 830M		8232 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21624 (263%)

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 information (measured in MB 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 its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video 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 number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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 bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.