GeForce GT 230 vs Radeon R9 270X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 270X, which has GPU clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1400 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1280 Stream Processors, 80 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 230		65 Watts
Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
	Difference: 115 Watts (177%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 270X, in theory, should perform a lot faster than the GeForce GT 230 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
GeForce GT 230		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 140800 (367%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X will be a lot (more or less 809%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 230. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 230		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 71200 (809%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 270X is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 230		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 27600 (627%)

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 transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must 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 anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. 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 of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.