GeForce GTX 580 vs Radeon R9 M280X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M280X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1375 MHz on this specific 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)

Radeon R9 M280X		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
	Difference: 169 Watts (225%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 580 is 119% faster than the Radeon R9 M280X in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		88000 MB/sec
	Difference: 104384 (119%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X will be a bit (about 2%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 580. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 992 (2%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		14400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22656 (157%)

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 transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.