GeForce GT 420 vs Radeon R9 M395X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M395X, which features 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 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 420		50 Watts
Radeon R9 M395X		125 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (150%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 M395X should be 456% faster than the GeForce GT 420 overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 M395X		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 420		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 131200 (456%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M395X will be a lot (approximately 1553%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GT 420. (explain)

Radeon R9 M395X		92544 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 420		5600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 86944 (1553%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M395X is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 M395X		23136 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 420		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20336 (726%)

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 transported past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video 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 write 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 card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.