GeForce GTX 260 vs Radeon R9 M280X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M280X, which comes with core clock speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1375 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 896 SPUs along with 56 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M280X		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 260		182 Watts
	Difference: 107 Watts (143%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 260 should be much faster than the Radeon R9 M280X in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		111888 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		88000 MB/sec
	Difference: 23888 (27%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X is a lot (about 37%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 260. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 260		36864 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13536 (37%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 260 should be a small bit (about 12%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon R9 M280X, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 260		16128 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		14400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1728 (12%)

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 data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.