GeForce GTS 450 vs Radeon R9 M280X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M280X, which has a core clock speed of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1375 MHz. It also features a 128-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 896 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 16 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M280X		75 Watts
GeForce GTS 450		106 Watts
	Difference: 31 Watts (41%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 M280X should perform a lot faster than the GeForce GTS 450 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		88000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 30272 (52%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X will be much (about 101%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTS 450. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 25344 (101%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X will be a bit (about 15%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce GTS 450, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		14400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		12528 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1872 (15%)

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 transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.