In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the AMD Radeon HD 2900 XT 512MB are noticeably better than the Nvidia GeForce GT 730 v3 Gigabyte 2GB Edition.

The HD 2900 XT has a 43 MHz higher core clock speed and the same number of Texture Mapping Units as the GT 730. This results in the HD 2900 XT providing 0.7 GTexel/s better texturing performance. This still holds weight but shader performance is generally more relevant, particularly since both of these GPUs support at least DirectX 10.

The HD 2900 XT has a 43 MHz higher core clock speed and 12 more Render Output Units than the GT 730. This results in the HD 2900 XT providing 9.1 GPixel/s better pixeling performance. However, both GPUs support DirectX 9 or above, and pixeling performance is only really relevant when comparing older cards.

The GT 730 was released over three years more recently than the HD 2900 XT, and so the GT 730 is likely to have far better driver support, meaning it will be much more optimized and ultimately superior to the HD 2900 XT when running the latest games.

The GT 730 has 1536 MB more video memory than the HD 2900 XT, so is likely to be much better at displaying game textures at higher resolutions. However, the overall memory performance is about the same.

The HD 2900 XT has 77.2 GB/sec greater memory bandwidth than the GT 730, which means that the memory performance of the HD 2900 XT is much better than the GT 730.

The GeForce GT 730 v3 Gigabyte 2GB Edition has 96 Shader Processing Units and the Radeon HD 2900 XT 512MB has 320. However, the actual shader performance of the GT 730 is 134 and the actual shader performance of the HD 2900 XT is 155. The HD 2900 XT having 21 better shader performance and an altogether better performance when taking into account other relevant data means that the HD 2900 XT delivers a significantly smoother and more efficient experience when processing graphical data than the GT 730.

The GT 730 transistor size technology is 40 nm (nanometers) smaller than the HD 2900 XT. This means that the GT 730 is expected to run much cooler and achieve higher clock frequencies than the HD 2900 XT.

The GeForce GT 730 v3 Gigabyte 2GB Edition requires 49 Watts to run and the Radeon HD 2900 XT 512MB requires 215 Watts. We would recommend a PSU with at least 300 Watts for the GT 730 and a PSU with at least 550 Watts for the HD 2900 XT. The HD 2900 XT requires 166 Watts more than the GT 730 to run. The difference is significant enough that the HD 2900 XT may have an adverse affect on your yearly electricity bills in comparison to the GT 730.