GeForce 9800 GTX vs Radeon R9 M280X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M280X, which has a GPU core clock speed of 900 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1375 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 896 Stream Processors, 56 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M280X		75 Watts
GeForce 9800 GTX		140 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (87%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 M280X should perform a lot faster than the GeForce 9800 GTX in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		88000 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 17600 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X should be a bit (approximately 17%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 9800 GTX. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		43200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7200 (17%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M280X is superior to the GeForce 9800 GTX, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		14400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		10800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3600 (33%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.