GeForce GT 1030 vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 290X, which features a GPU core clock speed of 800 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1250 MHz through a 512-bit bus. It also is comprised of 2816 Stream Processors, 176 TAUs, 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 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 270 Watts (900%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 290X should in theory perform a lot faster than the GeForce GT 1030 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X is quite a bit (more or less 248%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 1030. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 1030		40480 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 100320 (248%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X will be quite a bit (approximately 153%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GT 1030, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		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 largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, 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 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 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 could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.