GeForce GTX 280 vs GeForce GTX 560

Intro

Compare all of that to the GeForce GTX 560, which features a clock speed of 810 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1001 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 40 nm design. It is made up of 336 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 560		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 86 Watts (57%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 280 should be a little bit faster than the GeForce GTX 560 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 560		128128 MB/sec
	Difference: 13568 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 280 is a little bit (more or less 6%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 560. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 560		45360 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2800 (6%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 560 is superior to the GeForce GTX 280, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 560		25920 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6656 (35%)

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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling 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 could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes 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, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.