GeForce GT 420 vs Radeon R9 M280X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M280X, which comes with a core clock frequency of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1375 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 896 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 420		50 Watts
Radeon R9 M280X		75 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 M280X should in theory be quite a bit better than the GeForce GT 420 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		88000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 420		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 59200 (206%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X should be quite a bit (about 800%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GT 420. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 420		5600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 44800 (800%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M280X is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		14400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 420		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11600 (414%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better 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 can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.