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GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon R9 M290X

Intro

The GeForce GTX 280 makes use of a 65 nm design. nVidia has set the core frequency at 602 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a speed of 1107 MHz on this particular model. It features 240 SPUs along with 80 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M290X, which has a GPU core clock speed of 850 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1200 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1280 Stream Processors, 80 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M290X 100 Watts
GeForce GTX 280 236 Watts
Difference: 136 Watts (136%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 M290X is 8% faster than the GeForce GTX 280 in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X 153600 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 280 141696 MB/sec
Difference: 11904 (8%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X will be quite a bit (more or less 41%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 280. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X 68000 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 280 48160 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 19840 (41%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M290X will be quite a bit (more or less 41%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce GTX 280, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 M290X 27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 280 19264 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 7936 (41%)

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

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GeForce GTX 280

Amazon.com

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Radeon R9 M290X

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce GTX 280 Radeon R9 M290X
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year June 17, 2008 May 1 2014
Code Name G200 Neptune XT
Memory 1024 MB 4096 MB
Core Speed 602 MHz 850 MHz
Memory Speed 2214 MHz 4800 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 236 watts 100 watts
Bandwidth 141696 MB/sec 153600 MB/sec
Texel Rate 48160 Mtexels/sec 68000 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 19264 Mpixels/sec 27200 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 240 1280
Texture Mapping Units 80 80
Render Output Units 32 32
Bus Type GDDR3 GDDR5
Bus Width 512-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 65 nm 28 nm
Transistors 1400 million (Unknown) million
Bus PCIe x16 2.0 PCIe 3.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10 DirectX 11.2
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.1 OpenGL 4.3

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce GTX 280

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon R9 M290X

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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