GeForce 8800 GT 256MB vs Radeon R9 M280X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M280X, which comes with a clock speed of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1375 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 896 SPUs, 56 Texture Address Units, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M280X		75 Watts
GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		105 Watts
	Difference: 30 Watts (40%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 M280X will be 96% faster than the GeForce 8800 GT 256MB in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		88000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		44800 MB/sec
	Difference: 43200 (96%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X should be a lot (more or less 50%) better at AF than the GeForce 8800 GT 256MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16800 (50%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X is much (approximately 50%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce 8800 GT 256MB, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		14400 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GT 256MB		9600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4800 (50%)

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 moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.