GeForce 8800 GT 512MB vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 280, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 933 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this card. It features 1792 SPUs along with 112 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		105 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 145 Watts (138%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 280 should theoretically be much superior to the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 182400 (317%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 will be quite a bit (approximately 211%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8800 GT 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 70896 (211%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 512MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20256 (211%)

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 max amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 worked out by multiplying the total 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount 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 output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.