GeForce GTX 950M vs Radeon R9 M280X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M280X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1375 MHz on this specific card. It features 896 SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 950M		55 Watts
Radeon R9 M280X		75 Watts
	Difference: 20 Watts (36%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 M280X should be much faster than the GeForce GTX 950M in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		88000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 950M		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 56000 (175%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X is a lot (about 38%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 950M. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 950M		36560 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13840 (38%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950M will be a bit (approximately 2%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon R9 M280X, and capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950M		14624 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		14400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 224 (2%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. 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 quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.