GeForce 8800 Ultra vs Radeon R9 M380

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M380, which comes with core clock speeds of 1000 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 640 SPUs along with 40 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 8800 Ultra should be a bit faster than the Radeon R9 M380 in general. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M380		96000 MB/sec
	Difference: 7680 (8%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M380 is just a bit (about 2%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 8800 Ultra. (explain)

Radeon R9 M380		40000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 832 (2%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 M380 is a better choice, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

Radeon R9 M380		16000 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1312 (9%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, 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 maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output 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 maximum fill rate.