GeForce 9800 GT 512MB vs Radeon R9 380 2G

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 380 2G, which features a clock speed of 970 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1425 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 1792 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		105 Watts
Radeon R9 380 2G		190 Watts
	Difference: 85 Watts (81%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 380 2G should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		182400 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 124800 (217%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 380 2G should be much (more or less 223%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		108640 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 75040 (223%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 380 2G should be a lot (approximately 223%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce 9800 GT 512MB, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		31040 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GT 512MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21440 (223%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.