GeForce GTX 870M vs Radeon R9 M280X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 M280X, which features a clock frequency of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1375 MHz. It also features a 128-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 896 SPUs, 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 870M		110 Watts
	Difference: 35 Watts (47%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 870M should in theory be a small bit better than the Radeon R9 M280X overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		96000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		88000 MB/sec
	Difference: 8000 (9%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 870M is much (approximately 109%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon R9 M280X. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		105392 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		50400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 54992 (109%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 870M is the winner, by far. (explain)

GeForce GTX 870M		22584 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		14400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8184 (57%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core 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 fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.