GeForce GTX 280 vs GeForce GTX 950

Intro

Compare those specifications to the GeForce GTX 950, which has clock speeds of 1024 MHz on the GPU, and 1652 MHz on the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 768 SPUs along with 48 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 950		90 Watts
GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 146 Watts (162%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 280 should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 950 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 950		105728 MB/sec
	Difference: 35968 (34%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950 should be a bit (more or less 2%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 280. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950		49152 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 992 (2%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950 will be a lot (about 70%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 280, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950		32768 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13504 (70%)

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs 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 output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.