GeForce GT 430 vs GeForce GTX 980M

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 980M, which makes use of a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 1038 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1000 MHz on this specific model. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 Texture Address Units and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 430		60 Watts
GeForce GTX 980M		100 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 980M is 344% faster than the GeForce GT 430 in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		128000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 99200 (344%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M will be quite a bit (about 790%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 430. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		99648 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 430		11200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 88448 (790%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M should be quite a bit (approximately 2273%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 430, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		66432 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 63632 (2273%)

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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses 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, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the 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 the video card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock 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 also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.