GeForce 9400 GT 256MB vs Radeon R9 M380

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M380, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1500 MHz on this particular card. It features 640 SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 M380 should perform a lot faster than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M380		96000 MB/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 83200 (650%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M380 should be quite a bit (more or less 809%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M380		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		4400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 35600 (809%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M380 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 M380		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		2200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13800 (627%)

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 data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be 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 video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can 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 clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.