GeForce GTX 280 vs GeForce GTX 980M

Intro

Compare all that to the GeForce GTX 980M, which has core speeds of 1038 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1536 SPUs along with 96 Texture Address Units and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980M		100 Watts
GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 136 Watts (136%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 280 is 11% faster than the GeForce GTX 980M overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 980M		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 13696 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M is a lot (about 107%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 280. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		99648 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 51488 (107%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M will be much (about 245%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 280, and able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		66432 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 47168 (245%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount 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 applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of 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 rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.