GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 280, which features core clock speeds of 933 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1792 SPUs as well as 112 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 280 should be a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 128112 (115%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 should be much (more or less 152%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		41472 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 63024 (152%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 is much (approximately 85%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216, and will be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13728 (85%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units 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 a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per 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 called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.