GeForce GT 230 vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M290X, which features clock speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1200 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1280 SPUs along with 80 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 230		65 Watts
Radeon R9 M290X		100 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (54%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 M290X will be 300% quicker than the GeForce GT 230 overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		153600 MB/sec
GeForce GT 230		38400 MB/sec
	Difference: 115200 (300%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X should be a lot (more or less 673%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GT 230. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 230		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 59200 (673%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X should be a lot (approximately 518%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GT 230, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 230		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22800 (518%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is 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 ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.