GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon R9 M385X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M385X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1100 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1500 MHz on this specific model. It features 896 SPUs along with 56 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 9800 GX2 should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon R9 M385X overall. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M385X		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 32000 (33%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 will be quite a bit (more or less 25%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 M385X. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M385X		61600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15200 (25%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 9800 GX2 is a bit (approximately 9%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 M385X, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M385X		17600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1600 (9%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.