GeForce GTX 970M vs Radeon R9 M380

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M380, which features a clock speed of 1000 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 640 SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have exactly the same bandwidth, so in theory they should have the same performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M should be quite a bit (more or less 85%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 M380. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		73920 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M380		40000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 33920 (85%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970M should be much (about 177%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 M380, and capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970M		44352 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M380		16000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 28352 (177%)

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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video 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 amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.