GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 280X, which has a core clock frequency of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1500 MHz. It also uses a 384-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		50 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 200 Watts (400%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 280X should be a lot faster than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 272000 (1700%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X will be a lot (approximately 1136%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 100000 (1136%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280X is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.