GeForce GTX 280 vs GeForce GTX 980M

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 980M, which has core speeds of 1038 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1536 SPUs as well as 96 Texture Address Units and 64 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980M		100 Watts
GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 136 Watts (136%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 280, in theory, should perform a little bit faster than the GeForce GTX 980M in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 980M		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 13696 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M will be quite a bit (more or less 107%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 280. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		99648 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 51488 (107%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 980M is superior to the GeForce GTX 280, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		66432 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 47168 (245%)

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 moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.