GeForce GTX 470 vs Radeon R9 M280X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M280X, which has clock speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1375 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 896 SPUs along with 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 470		215 Watts
	Difference: 140 Watts (187%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 470 should theoretically be quite a bit better than the Radeon R9 M280X in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		133920 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		88000 MB/sec
	Difference: 45920 (52%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X should be a lot (more or less 48%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 470. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 470		33992 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16408 (48%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 470 is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 470		24280 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		14400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9880 (69%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many 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.