GeForce 820M vs Radeon R9 M280X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M280X, which features a clock speed of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1375 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 896 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 820M		15 Watts
Radeon R9 M280X		75 Watts
	Difference: 60 Watts (400%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 M280X should in theory be much superior to the GeForce 820M in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		88000 MB/sec
GeForce 820M		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 72000 (450%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X will be much (about 338%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce 820M. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 820M		11504 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 38896 (338%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X is quite a bit (about 401%) better at FSAA than the GeForce 820M, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		14400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 820M		2876 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11524 (401%)

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 max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, 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 most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.