GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 280X, which has core clock speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory. 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 216SP 55 nm		171 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 79 Watts (46%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 280X is 157% faster than the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm overall, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		111888 MB/sec
	Difference: 176112 (157%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X should be much (approximately 162%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		41472 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 67328 (162%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280X is superior to the GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 260 216SP 55 nm		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 max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. 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 are applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated 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 memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.