GeForce GTX 650 vs Radeon R9 M280X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M280X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1375 MHz on this particular model. It features 896 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 650		64 Watts
Radeon R9 M280X		75 Watts
	Difference: 11 Watts (17%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 M280X should perform a small bit faster than the GeForce GTX 650 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		88000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 650		80000 MB/sec
	Difference: 8000 (10%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X should be a lot (approximately 49%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 650. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 650		33856 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16544 (49%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 650 will be a small bit (more or less 18%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon R9 M280X, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650		16928 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		14400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2528 (18%)

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 MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.