GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon R9 M380

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M380, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1500 MHz on this card. It features 640 SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 9800 GX2 should be 33% faster than the Radeon R9 M380 in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M380		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 32000 (33%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 will be quite a bit (approximately 92%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 M380. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M380		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 36800 (92%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 is just a bit (about 20%) more effective at AA than the Radeon R9 M380, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M380		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3200 (20%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better 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 are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, 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 most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.