Radeon R7 M260X vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 280X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1500 MHz on this specific card. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 280X should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon R7 M260X in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
Radeon R7 M260X		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 224000 (350%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X will be a lot (about 449%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon R7 M260X. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 M260X		19800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 89000 (449%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280X is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 M260X		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20600 (312%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus 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 higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better 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 most pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core 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 output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.