GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 280X, which comes with a clock frequency of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also features a 384-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 2048 SPUs, 128 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		50 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 200 Watts (400%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 280X should in theory be a lot faster than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 272000 (1700%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X is much (approximately 1136%) better at AF than the GeForce 9500 GT DDR2. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 100000 (1136%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280X is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT DDR2		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22800 (518%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the 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 maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour 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 rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.