GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon R9 M390X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M390X, which comes with core speeds of 723 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M390X		125 Watts
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 125 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 480 should in theory be a small bit better than the Radeon R9 M390X in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M390X		160000 MB/sec
	Difference: 17408 (11%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M390X is much (more or less 120%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 480. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		92544 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 50544 (120%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 will be much (approximately 45%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 M390X, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M390X		23136 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10464 (45%)

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 information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should 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 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 higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.