GeForce GTX 860M vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 280X, which comes with clock speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 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 280X		8886 points
GeForce GTX 860M		4340 points
	Difference: 4546 (105%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 280X will be 350% faster than the GeForce GTX 860M in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 224000 (350%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X should be much (more or less 42%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 860M. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		76512 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32288 (42%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280X is superior to the GeForce GTX 860M, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 860M		12752 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14448 (113%)

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 max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's 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 texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at 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 that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.