GeForce 9400 GT 256MB vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 280X, which features core clock speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		50 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 200 Watts (400%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 280X should be 2150% faster than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 275200 (2150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X should be quite a bit (about 2373%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		4400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 104400 (2373%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X is much (about 1136%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		2200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 25000 (1136%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs 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, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.