GeForce 8800 GT 256MB vs Radeon R9 M390X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M390X, which comes with a clock frequency of 723 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		105 Watts
Radeon R9 M390X		125 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (19%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 M390X should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8800 GT 256MB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		160000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		44800 MB/sec
	Difference: 115200 (257%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M390X is much (approximately 175%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce 8800 GT 256MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		92544 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 58944 (175%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M390X is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		23136 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13536 (141%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.