GeForce 9800 GX2 vs Radeon R9 380 4G

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 380 4G, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 970 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1425 MHz on this specific card. It features 1792 SPUs along with 112 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

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

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 380 4G should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9800 GX2 overall. (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 (approximately 41%) faster with regards to 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 running with a high 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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.