GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon R9 M390X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M390X, which comes with a core clock speed of 723 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 2048 SPUs, 128 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M390X		125 Watts
GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 111 Watts (89%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 M390X should theoretically be a bit superior to the GeForce GTX 280 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
	Difference: 18304 (13%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M390X is a lot (more or less 92%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 280. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		92544 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 44384 (92%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M390X will be a small bit (more or less 20%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 280, and will be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		23136 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3872 (20%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated 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 fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.