GeForce GT 430 vs Radeon R9 285

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 285, which has a core clock frequency of 918 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1375 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1792 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 430		60 Watts
Radeon R9 285		190 Watts
	Difference: 130 Watts (217%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 285 should in theory be much better than the GeForce GT 430 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 285		176000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 147200 (511%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 285 should be a lot (approximately 818%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 430. (explain)

Radeon R9 285		102816 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 430		11200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 91616 (818%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 285 will be quite a bit (about 949%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 430, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 285		29376 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 26576 (949%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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 memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.