GeForce 9800 GTX vs Radeon R9 M275X

Intro

The GeForce 9800 GTX features a core clock frequency of 675 MHz and a GDDR3 memory frequency of 1100 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 65 nm design. It is comprised of 128 SPUs, 64 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M275X, which has a clock frequency of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1125 MHz. It also features a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 640 SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card 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 processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.