GeForce GTX 1060 vs Radeon R9 M280X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M280X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1375 MHz on this card. It features 896 SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M280X		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 1060		120 Watts
	Difference: 45 Watts (60%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 1060 should be a lot faster than the Radeon R9 M280X in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060		196608 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		88000 MB/sec
	Difference: 108608 (123%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1060 is a lot (about 139%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon R9 M280X. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060		120480 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		50400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 70080 (139%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 1060 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060		72288 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		14400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 57888 (402%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record 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 card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.