GeForce GTX 980 vs Radeon R9 M385X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M385X, which comes with a clock frequency of 1100 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1500 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 896 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 980 should theoretically be quite a bit faster than the Radeon R9 M385X in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		224000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M385X		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 128000 (133%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 is a lot (about 134%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 M385X. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M385X		61600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 82528 (134%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M385X		17600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 54464 (309%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.