GeForce GT 430 vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M290X, which features a clock speed of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1200 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1280 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 430		60 Watts
Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 M290X should in theory be quite a bit better than the GeForce GT 430 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 430		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 124800 (433%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X should be quite a bit (more or less 507%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GT 430. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 430		11200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 56800 (507%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M290X is superior to the GeForce GT 430, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 430		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24400 (871%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.