GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon R9 M265X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M265X, which features a GPU core clock speed of 575 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1125 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 640 Stream Processors, 40 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 280 should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon R9 M265X in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M265X		72000 MB/sec
	Difference: 69696 (97%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 280 will be much (more or less 109%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon R9 M265X. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M265X		23000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 25160 (109%)

Pixel Rate

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

GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M265X		9200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10064 (109%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core 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 a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to 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 reach the max fill rate.