GeForce GTX 960M vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 280, which features core clock speeds of 933 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1792 SPUs along with 112 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon R9 280		7961 points
GeForce GTX 960M		4350 points
	Difference: 3611 (83%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960M		65 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 185 Watts (285%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 280 will be 275% faster than the GeForce GTX 960M overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 176000 (275%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 is a lot (more or less 138%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 960M. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 960M		43840 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 60656 (138%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 should be much (more or less 70%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 960M, and also capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 960M		17536 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12320 (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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video 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 write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units 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 rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.