GeForce 9800 GTX+ vs Radeon R9 M280X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M280X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1375 MHz on this particular model. It features 896 SPUs along with 56 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M280X		75 Watts
GeForce 9800 GTX+		145 Watts
	Difference: 70 Watts (93%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 M280X should theoretically be a lot faster than the GeForce 9800 GTX+ overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X is a bit (about 7%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 9800 GTX+. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX+		47232 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3168 (7%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X will be quite a bit (more or less 22%) better at AA than the GeForce 9800 GTX+, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		14400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX+		11808 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2592 (22%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.