GeForce GTX 295 vs Radeon R9 M280X

Intro

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

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M280X		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 295		289 Watts
	Difference: 214 Watts (285%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 295 should theoretically be a lot superior to the Radeon R9 M280X in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		223776 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		88000 MB/sec
	Difference: 135776 (154%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 295 is quite a bit (about 83%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 M280X. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		92160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		50400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 41760 (83%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 295 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 295		32256 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		14400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17856 (124%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.