GeForce 8800 GTX vs Radeon R9 390 8G

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 390 8G, which comes with GPU clock speed of 1000 MHz, and 8192 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1500 MHz through a 512-bit bus. It also is made up of 2560 SPUs, 160 TAUs, and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GTX		155 Watts
Radeon R9 390 8G		275 Watts
	Difference: 120 Watts (77%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 390 8G should be much faster than the GeForce 8800 GTX overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		384000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTX		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 297600 (344%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 390 8G will be a lot (approximately 335%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8800 GTX. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		160000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTX		36800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 123200 (335%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 390 8G is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		64000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTX		13800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 50200 (364%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.