GeForce GTX 280 vs GeForce GTX 950

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 950, which comes with a clock speed of 1024 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1652 MHz. It also features a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 768 SPUs, 48 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 950		90 Watts
GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 146 Watts (162%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 280, in theory, should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 950 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 950		105728 MB/sec
	Difference: 35968 (34%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950 will be a bit (approximately 2%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 280. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950		49152 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 992 (2%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 950 is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950		32768 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13504 (70%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better 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 processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of 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 could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.