GeForce GTX 980M vs Radeon R9 M395X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M395X, which comes with a clock frequency of 723 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 2048 SPUs, 128 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980M		100 Watts
Radeon R9 M395X		125 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 M395X should in theory be a lot superior to the GeForce GTX 980M overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M395X		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 980M		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 32000 (25%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M will be a small bit (approximately 8%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 M395X. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		99648 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M395X		92544 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 7104 (8%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980M is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		66432 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M395X		23136 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 43296 (187%)

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 max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

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