GeForce 8500 GT vs Radeon R9 M380

Intro

Compare those specs 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 frequency of 1500 MHz on this specific model. It features 640 SPUs along with 40 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 M380 should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8500 GT overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M380		96000 MB/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 83200 (650%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M380 should be quite a bit (more or less 1011%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 8500 GT. (explain)

Radeon R9 M380		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		3600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 36400 (1011%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M380 will be much (approximately 789%) better at FSAA than the GeForce 8500 GT, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 M380		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8500 GT		1800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14200 (789%)

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 max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This 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 handling 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 worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. 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 many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.