GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon R7 M260X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R7 M260X, which features a clock speed of 825 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also makes use of a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 384 SPUs, 24 Texture Address Units, and 8 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 280, in theory, should perform a lot faster than the Radeon R7 M260X in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
Radeon R7 M260X		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 77696 (121%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 280 is much (approximately 143%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon R7 M260X. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 M260X		19800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28360 (143%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 280 is a better choice, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 M260X		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12664 (192%)

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 MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.