Radeon R7 M260X vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 280, which has GPU core speed of 933 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1250 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is made up of 1792 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 280 should in theory be a lot superior to the Radeon R7 M260X in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
Radeon R7 M260X		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 176000 (275%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 should be much (approximately 428%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon R7 M260X. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 M260X		19800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 84696 (428%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280 is superior to the Radeon R7 M260X, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 M260X		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 23256 (352%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics 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 maximum number of pixels the graphics card can 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 Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.