GeForce 9400 GT 256MB vs Radeon R9 M280X

Intro

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

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		50 Watts
Radeon R9 M280X		75 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 M280X, in theory, should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		88000 MB/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 75200 (588%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X should be quite a bit (about 1045%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		4400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 46000 (1045%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M280X is superior to the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		14400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		2200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12200 (555%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.