GeForce GT 430 1GB vs Radeon R9 M280X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M280X, which features a core clock frequency of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1375 MHz. It also features a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 896 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 430 1GB		60 Watts
Radeon R9 M280X		75 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 M280X is 206% quicker than the GeForce GT 430 1GB in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		88000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 59200 (206%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X should be quite a bit (more or less 350%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 430 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		11200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 39200 (350%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M280X is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		14400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430 1GB		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11600 (414%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock 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 chip could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. 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 many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.