Radeon R7 M260 vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 280, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 933 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1250 MHz on this card. It features 1792 SPUs as well as 112 TAUs 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 R7 M260		1120 points
	Difference: 6841 (611%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 280, in theory, should be much faster than the Radeon R7 M260 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
Radeon R7 M260		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 224000 (1400%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 will be quite a bit (approximately 509%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon R7 M260. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 M260		17160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 87336 (509%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 should be much (more or less 422%) more effective at AA than the Radeon R7 M260, and able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 M260		5720 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24136 (422%)

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 within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.