GeForce GTX 260 vs Radeon R9 M280X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 M280X, which features clock speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1375 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM. 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 260		182 Watts
	Difference: 107 Watts (143%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 260 should in theory be quite a bit superior to the Radeon R9 M280X in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		111888 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		88000 MB/sec
	Difference: 23888 (27%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X should be quite a bit (more or less 37%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 260. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13536 (37%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 should be just a bit (about 12%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon R9 M280X, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		16128 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		14400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1728 (12%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out 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 outputting the pixels (image) to 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 ability to reach the maximum fill rate.