GeForce GT 1030 vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 280X, which features a core clock frequency of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1500 MHz. It also features a 384-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 1030		30 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 220 Watts (733%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 280X, in theory, should perform a lot faster than the GeForce GT 1030 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 1030		49152 MB/sec
	Difference: 238848 (486%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X should be quite a bit (approximately 169%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 1030. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 1030		40480 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 68320 (169%)

Pixel Rate

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

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 1030		20240 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6960 (34%)

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 data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few 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.