GeForce GTS 450 vs Radeon R9 M390X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M390X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 723 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a speed of 1250 MHz on this particular model. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 450		106 Watts
Radeon R9 M390X		125 Watts
	Difference: 19 Watts (18%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 M390X should theoretically be quite a bit better than the GeForce GTS 450 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 102272 (177%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M390X is a lot (approximately 269%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTS 450. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		92544 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 67488 (269%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M390X is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		23136 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		12528 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10608 (85%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type 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 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.