GeForce 8800 Ultra vs Radeon R9 M280X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M280X, which features core speeds of 900 MHz on the GPU, and 1375 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 896 SPUs along with 56 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M280X		75 Watts
GeForce 8800 Ultra		171 Watts
	Difference: 96 Watts (128%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce 8800 Ultra is 18% faster than the Radeon R9 M280X in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		88000 MB/sec
	Difference: 15680 (18%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X is much (about 29%) more effective at AF than the GeForce 8800 Ultra. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11232 (29%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 8800 Ultra is superior to the Radeon R9 M280X, though not by far. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		14400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 288 (2%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. 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 rate also depends on lots of 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.