GeForce 9400 GT 256MB vs Radeon R9 M280X

Intro

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

In theory, the Radeon R9 M280X is 588% quicker than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X will be much (approximately 1045%) more effective at AF 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 a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M280X is a better choice, 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 max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of 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.