GeForce GTX 280 vs GeForce GTX 650

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 650, which makes use of a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 1058 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this particular card. It features 384 SPUs as well as 32 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 650		64 Watts
GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 172 Watts (269%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 280 will be 77% faster than the GeForce GTX 650 overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 650		80000 MB/sec
	Difference: 61696 (77%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 280 is much (approximately 42%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 650. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 650		33856 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14304 (42%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 280 is superior to the GeForce GTX 650, though not by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 650		16928 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2336 (14%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

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