GeForce GTX 460 vs Radeon R9 M280X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 M280X, which features a clock frequency of 900 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1375 MHz. It also uses a 128-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 896 SPUs, 56 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M280X		75 Watts
GeForce GTX 460		150 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 M280X should theoretically be just a bit superior to the GeForce GTX 460 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		88000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 1600 (2%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X is a lot (about 33%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12600 (33%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 460 will be a bit (more or less 13%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon R9 M280X, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 460		16200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		14400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1800 (13%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at 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 chip can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.