GeForce GTX 980M vs Radeon R9 M280X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M280X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1375 MHz on this specific model. It features 896 SPUs as well as 56 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M280X		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 980M		100 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (33%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 980M, in theory, should be a lot faster than the Radeon R9 M280X overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		128000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		88000 MB/sec
	Difference: 40000 (45%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M will be a lot (about 98%) better at AF than the Radeon R9 M280X. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		99648 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		50400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 49248 (98%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980M is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		66432 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		14400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 52032 (361%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.