GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 280X, which comes with core clock speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		202 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 48 Watts (24%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 280X should in theory be quite a bit superior to the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 176112 (157%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X will be a lot (about 162%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		41472 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 67328 (162%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280X is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11072 (69%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated 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 fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.