GeForce GTS 150 vs Radeon R9 M280X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M280X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1375 MHz on this specific model. 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)

Radeon R9 M280X		75 Watts
GeForce GTS 150		141 Watts
	Difference: 66 Watts (88%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 M280X should be a lot faster than the GeForce GTS 150 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		88000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 150		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 56000 (175%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X will be a little bit (approximately 6%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTS 150. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 150		47360 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 3040 (6%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X is quite a bit (about 22%) better at AA than the GeForce GTS 150, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		14400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 150		11840 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2560 (22%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This 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 graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.