GeForce GTS 450 vs Radeon R9 M380

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M380, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1500 MHz on this card. It features 640 SPUs as well as 40 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 M380 should theoretically be a lot superior to the GeForce GTS 450 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M380		96000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 38272 (66%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M380 will be a lot (more or less 60%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTS 450. (explain)

Radeon R9 M380		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14944 (60%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M380 is a lot (about 28%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GTS 450, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 M380		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		12528 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3472 (28%)

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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.