Radeon R7 260X vs Radeon R9 M280X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M280X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1375 MHz on this particular card. It features 896 SPUs as well as 56 TAUs and 16 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M280X		75 Watts
Radeon R7 260X		115 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (53%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R7 260X should be 18% faster than the Radeon R9 M280X in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		104000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		88000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (18%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R7 260X will be much (about 22%) more effective at AF than the Radeon R9 M280X. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		61600 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		50400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11200 (22%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R7 260X is superior to the Radeon R9 M280X, by far. (explain)

Radeon R7 260X		17600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		14400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3200 (22%)

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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher 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 applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card 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 number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. 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 rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.