GeForce GTX 280 vs GeForce GTX 980M

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce GTX 980M, which makes use of a 28 nm design. nVidia has clocked the core speed at 1038 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1000 MHz on this specific model. It features 1536 SPUs along with 96 Texture Address Units and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980M		100 Watts
GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 136 Watts (136%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 280 should theoretically be just a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 980M in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 980M		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 13696 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M should be much (approximately 107%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 280. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		99648 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 51488 (107%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980M is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		66432 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 47168 (245%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out 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 filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.