GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 280X, which has core speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		202 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 48 Watts (24%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 280X is 157% quicker than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 176112 (157%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X will be much (approximately 162%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		41472 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 67328 (162%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X should be quite a bit (more or less 69%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 260 Core 216, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 Core 216		16128 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11072 (69%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video 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 that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.