GeForce GTX 650 vs Radeon R9 M280X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 M280X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 900 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1375 MHz on this card. It features 896 SPUs as well as 56 Texture Address Units and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 650		64 Watts
Radeon R9 M280X		75 Watts
	Difference: 11 Watts (17%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 M280X should perform a small bit faster than the GeForce GTX 650 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		88000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 650		80000 MB/sec
	Difference: 8000 (10%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X will be quite a bit (about 49%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 650. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 650		33856 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 16544 (49%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 650 is a small bit (about 18%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 M280X, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 650		16928 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		14400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2528 (18%)

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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.