GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3 vs Radeon R9 M280X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M280X, which features GPU clock speed of 900 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1375 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is made up of 896 Stream Processors, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		50 Watts
Radeon R9 M280X		75 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 M280X should theoretically perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		88000 MB/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		25600 MB/sec
	Difference: 62400 (244%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X is much (about 473%) better at AF than the GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		8800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 41600 (473%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M280X is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		14400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9500 GT 1GB GDDR3		4400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10000 (227%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should 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 AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

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