GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon R9 M385X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M385X, which comes with GPU clock speed of 1100 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1500 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 896 Stream Processors, 56 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 970 should theoretically be quite a bit better than the Radeon R9 M385X overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M385X		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 128000 (133%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 should be much (about 77%) more effective at AF than the Radeon R9 M385X. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M385X		61600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 47600 (77%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 should be a lot (about 282%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 M385X, and capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M385X		17600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 49600 (282%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at 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 that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.