GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon R7 M260

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R7 M260, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 715 MHz. The DDR3 memory works at a speed of 1000 MHz on this particular model. It features 384 SPUs along with 24 Texture Address Units and 8 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce GTX 280 should in theory be a lot superior to the Radeon R7 M260 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
Radeon R7 M260		16000 MB/sec
	Difference: 125696 (786%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 280 will be quite a bit (about 181%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R7 M260. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 M260		17160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31000 (181%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 280 will be quite a bit (approximately 237%) better at FSAA than the Radeon R7 M260, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 M260		5720 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13544 (237%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses 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, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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 ability to get to the max fill rate.