GeForce 8400 GS 512MB vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 280X, which has GPU clock speed of 850 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1500 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is comprised of 2048 Stream Processors, 128 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8400 GS 512MB		40 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 210 Watts (525%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 280X, in theory, should be a lot faster than the GeForce 8400 GS 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
GeForce 8400 GS 512MB		6400 MB/sec
	Difference: 281600 (4400%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X is a lot (about 1992%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8400 GS 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8400 GS 512MB		5200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 103600 (1992%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X will be a lot (more or less 946%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8400 GS 512MB, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8400 GS 512MB		2600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24600 (946%)

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 max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card 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 processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory per 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 filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.