GeForce GTX 280 vs Geforce GTX 690

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Geforce GTX 690, which features core clock speeds of 915 MHz on the GPU, and 1502 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
Geforce GTX 690		300 Watts
	Difference: 64 Watts (27%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Geforce GTX 690 should in theory be a lot superior to the GeForce GTX 280 in general. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		384512 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
	Difference: 242816 (171%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 690 is quite a bit (about 386%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 280. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		234240 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 186080 (386%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Geforce GTX 690 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		58560 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 39296 (204%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.