Radeon R5 M230 vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon R9 280		7961 points
Radeon R5 M230		1281 points
	Difference: 6680 (521%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 280 should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon R5 M230 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
Radeon R5 M230		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 224000 (1400%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 should be quite a bit (approximately 570%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon R5 M230. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R5 M230		15600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 88896 (570%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 is quite a bit (more or less 857%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon R5 M230, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R5 M230		3120 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 26736 (857%)

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 MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also 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, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.