GeForce 9800 GTX vs Radeon R9 M280X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M280X, which features GPU clock speed of 900 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1375 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 896 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M280X		75 Watts
GeForce 9800 GTX		140 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (87%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 M280X should perform a lot faster than the GeForce 9800 GTX overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		88000 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 17600 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X should be just a bit (more or less 17%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 9800 GTX. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		43200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7200 (17%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M280X is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		14400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		10800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3600 (33%)

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 max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.