Radeon R7 M260X vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 280X, which comes with clock speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 280X should theoretically be quite a bit better than the Radeon R7 M260X in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
Radeon R7 M260X		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 224000 (350%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X should be quite a bit (approximately 449%) more effective at AF than the Radeon R7 M260X. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 M260X		19800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 89000 (449%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X will be quite a bit (about 312%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R7 M260X, and able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 M260X		6600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20600 (312%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 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 high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.