GeForce 830M vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 280X, which has a core clock speed of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also makes use of a 384-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 2048 SPUs, 128 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 280X will be 1900% faster than the GeForce 830M overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
GeForce 830M		14400 MB/sec
	Difference: 273600 (1900%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X will be quite a bit (more or less 561%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 830M. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 830M		16464 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 92336 (561%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280X is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 830M		8232 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 18968 (230%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's 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 processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units 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 applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.