GeForce GT 1030 vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 290, which features a core clock speed of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 512-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 2560 SPUs, 160 Texture Address Units, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 1030		30 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 270 Watts (900%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 290 should in theory be quite a bit better than the GeForce GT 1030 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 1030		49152 MB/sec
	Difference: 270848 (551%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 should be much (about 216%) better at AF than the GeForce GT 1030. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 1030		40480 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 87520 (216%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 290 is superior to the GeForce GT 1030, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 1030		20240 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 30960 (153%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units 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 rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.