GeForce 9800 GTX vs Radeon R9 M385X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M385X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1100 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1500 MHz on this particular card. It features 896 SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 M385X should theoretically perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce 9800 GTX in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		96000 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 25600 (36%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M385X will be a lot (approximately 43%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 9800 GTX. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		61600 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		43200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 18400 (43%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M385X should be quite a bit (more or less 63%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce 9800 GTX, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 M385X		17600 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		10800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6800 (63%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

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