GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon R9 M385X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M385X, which comes with a core clock frequency of 1100 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 896 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 480 is 85% faster than the Radeon R9 M385X overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M385X		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 81408 (85%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M385X is quite a bit (approximately 47%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 480. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		61600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19600 (47%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 480 is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M385X		17600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16000 (91%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, 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 high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.