GeForce GTX 580 vs Radeon R9 M280X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M280X, which has a core clock speed of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1375 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 896 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M280X		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
	Difference: 169 Watts (225%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 580 should be 119% quicker than the Radeon R9 M280X overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		88000 MB/sec
	Difference: 104384 (119%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X will be just a bit (more or less 2%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 580. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 992 (2%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 is a lot (more or less 157%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 M280X, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		14400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22656 (157%)

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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few 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.