GeForce GTX 275 vs GeForce GTX 280

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce GTX 280, which has a clock frequency of 602 MHz and a GDDR3 memory speed of 1107 MHz. It also makes use of a 512-bit memory bus, and uses a 65 nm design. It features 240 SPUs, 80 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 275		219 Watts
GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 17 Watts (8%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the GeForce GTX 280 should be just a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 275 in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 275		127008 MB/sec
	Difference: 14688 (12%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 275 is a bit (about 5%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 280. (explain)

GeForce GTX 275		50640 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 2480 (5%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 280 will be a bit (more or less 9%) better at AA than the GeForce GTX 275, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 275		17724 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1540 (9%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, 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 can be applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

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