GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 280, which comes with a core clock frequency of 933 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also uses a 384-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1792 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 53 Watts (27%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 280 should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9800 GX2 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 112000 (88%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 should be much (about 36%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 9800 GX2. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 27696 (36%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 is quite a bit (approximately 56%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce 9800 GX2, and should be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10656 (56%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once 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 AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the 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 that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.