GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon R5 M255

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R5 M255, which comes with a clock speed of 940 MHz and a DDR3 memory speed of 1000 MHz. It also makes use of a 64-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 320 SPUs, 20 TAUs, and 8 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 280 should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon R5 M255 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
Radeon R5 M255		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 125696 (786%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 280 will be much (about 156%) more effective at AF than the Radeon R5 M255. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R5 M255		18800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 29360 (156%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 280 is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R5 M255		7520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11744 (156%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core 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 is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.