Radeon R5 M330 vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 280, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 933 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1250 MHz on this specific model. It features 1792 SPUs along with 112 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 280 should theoretically be quite a bit better than the Radeon R5 M330 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
Radeon R5 M330		14400 MB/sec
	Difference: 225600 (1567%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 will be much (more or less 407%) more effective at AF than the Radeon R5 M330. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R5 M330		20600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 83896 (407%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R5 M330		8240 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21616 (262%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better 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 are processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock 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 fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.