GeForce GTX 860M vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 280, which has a core clock speed of 933 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also features a 384-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1792 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon R9 280		7961 points
GeForce GTX 860M		4340 points
	Difference: 3621 (83%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 860M		45 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 205 Watts (456%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 280 should in theory be quite a bit superior to the GeForce GTX 860M in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 176000 (275%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 should be much (approximately 37%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 860M. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		76512 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 27984 (37%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 should be quite a bit (more or less 134%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GTX 860M, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		12752 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17104 (134%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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