GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon R9 380 4G

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 380 4G, which has a clock frequency of 970 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1425 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1792 SPUs, 112 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 380 4G		190 Watts
GeForce 9800 GX2		197 Watts
	Difference: 7 Watts (4%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 380 4G is 43% faster than the GeForce 9800 GX2 in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 4G		182400 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 54400 (43%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 380 4G is much (more or less 41%) better at AF than the GeForce 9800 GX2. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 4G		108640 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		76800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31840 (41%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 380 4G is superior to the GeForce 9800 GX2, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 4G		31040 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GX2		19200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11840 (62%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This 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 video 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 graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.