Radeon R5 M330 vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 280, which comes with GPU core speed of 933 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1250 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also features 1792 SPUs, 112 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 280 is 1567% faster than the Radeon R5 M330 in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
Radeon R5 M330		14400 MB/sec
	Difference: 225600 (1567%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 should be a lot (approximately 407%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon R5 M330. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R5 M330		20600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 83896 (407%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R5 M330		8240 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21616 (262%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write 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 core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.