Compare any two graphics cards:
VS

GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

The GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm comes with a clock speed of 576 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 999 MHz. It also makes use of a 448-bit memory bus, and uses a 55 nm design. It is made up of 216 SPUs, 72 Texture Address Units, and 28 ROPs.

Compare that to the Radeon R9 280X, which features a GPU core clock speed of 850 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1500 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also features 2048 SPUs, 128 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm 171 Watts
Radeon R9 280X 250 Watts
Difference: 79 Watts (46%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 280X, in theory, should perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X 288000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm 111888 MB/sec
Difference: 176112 (157%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X will be a lot (approximately 162%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X 108800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm 41472 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 67328 (162%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X should be a lot (more or less 69%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X 27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm 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

Display Prices

Hide Prices

GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon R9 280X

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

Display Specifications

Hide Specifications

Model GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm Radeon R9 280X
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year December 22, 2008 October 2013
Code Name G200b Tahiti XTL
Memory 896 MB 3072 MB
Core Speed 576 MHz 850 MHz
Memory Speed 1998 MHz 6000 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 171 watts 250 watts
Bandwidth 111888 MB/sec 288000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 41472 Mtexels/sec 108800 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 16128 Mpixels/sec 27200 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 216 2048
Texture Mapping Units 72 128
Render Output Units 28 32
Bus Type GDDR3 GDDR5
Bus Width 448-bit 384-bit
Fab Process 55 nm 28 nm
Transistors 1400 million 4313 million
Bus PCIe x16 2.0 PCIe 3.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10 DirectX 11.2
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.1 OpenGL 4.3

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

Hide Prices

GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon R9 280X

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Comments

Be the first to leave a comment!

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


*

WordPress Anti Spam by WP-SpamShield