GeForce 830M vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 290X, which comes with a clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 512-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 2816 SPUs, 176 Texture Address Units, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 830M		25 Watts
Radeon R9 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 275 Watts (1100%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 290X should be much faster than the GeForce 830M in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		320000 MB/sec
GeForce 830M		14400 MB/sec
	Difference: 305600 (2122%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X will be quite a bit (about 755%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 830M. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 830M		16464 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 124336 (755%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 290X is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 830M		8232 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 42968 (522%)

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 MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better 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 can be applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many 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.