GeForce GTX 960M vs Radeon R9 M280X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M280X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1375 MHz on this specific card. It features 896 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960M		65 Watts
Radeon R9 M280X		75 Watts
	Difference: 10 Watts (15%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 M280X should in theory be a lot better than the GeForce GTX 960M overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		88000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960M		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 24000 (38%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X should be just a bit (more or less 15%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 960M. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 960M		43840 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 6560 (15%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 960M is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960M		17536 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		14400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3136 (22%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one 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 card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. 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 output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.