GeForce GTX 280 vs Geforce GTX 780

Intro

Compare those specs to the Geforce GTX 780, which comes with core clock speeds of 863 MHz on the GPU, and 1502 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2304 SPUs along with 192 TAUs and 48 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
Geforce GTX 780		250 Watts
	Difference: 14 Watts (6%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Geforce GTX 780, in theory, should perform a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 280 in general. (explain)

Geforce GTX 780		288384 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
	Difference: 146688 (104%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 780 is a lot (more or less 244%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 280. (explain)

Geforce GTX 780		165696 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 117536 (244%)

Pixel Rate

The Geforce GTX 780 will be quite a bit (about 115%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce GTX 280, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Geforce GTX 780		41424 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22160 (115%)

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 data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics 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 number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.