GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon R9 M385X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M385X, which comes with a clock speed of 1100 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 896 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 480 should in theory be much better than the Radeon R9 M385X in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M385X		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 81408 (85%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M385X should be quite a bit (approximately 47%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 480. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		61600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19600 (47%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 is much (more or less 91%) better at FSAA than the Radeon R9 M385X, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M385X		17600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16000 (91%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.