GeForce GTX 280 vs GeForce GTX 980

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 980, which comes with core speeds of 1126 MHz on the GPU, and 1750 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980		165 Watts
GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 71 Watts (43%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 980 should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 280 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		224000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
	Difference: 82304 (58%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 is quite a bit (about 199%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 280. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 95968 (199%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980 is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 52800 (274%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at 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 that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number 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 fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.