GeForce 9400 GT 256MB vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 280X, which comes with clock speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		50 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 200 Watts (400%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 280X should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		12800 MB/sec
	Difference: 275200 (2150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X will be quite a bit (more or less 2373%) better at AF than the GeForce 9400 GT 256MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		4400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 104400 (2373%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280X is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9400 GT 256MB		2200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 25000 (1136%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.