GeForce 9800 GTX vs Radeon R9 390X 8G

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 390X 8G, which features core clock speeds of 1050 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 8192 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2816 SPUs along with 176 TAUs and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GTX		140 Watts
Radeon R9 390X 8G		275 Watts
	Difference: 135 Watts (96%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 390X 8G should be a lot faster than the GeForce 9800 GTX in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 390X 8G		384000 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 313600 (445%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 390X 8G is much (approximately 328%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 9800 GTX. (explain)

Radeon R9 390X 8G		184800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		43200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 141600 (328%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 390X 8G is a lot (more or less 522%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9800 GTX, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 390X 8G		67200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		10800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 56400 (522%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses 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, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling 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 chip can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. 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 output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.