Radeon R7 M360 vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 280, which features GPU clock speed of 933 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1250 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also features 1792 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 280 should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon R7 M360 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
Radeon R7 M360		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 224000 (1400%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 is much (about 287%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon R7 M360. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 M360		27000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 77496 (287%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 will be much (more or less 232%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R7 M360, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 M360		9000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20856 (232%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.