GeForce 8800 Ultra 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 is set to run at a speed of 1375 MHz on this specific model. It features 896 SPUs along with 56 TAUs and 16 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M280X		75 Watts
GeForce 8800 Ultra		171 Watts
	Difference: 96 Watts (128%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce 8800 Ultra should perform a small bit faster than the Radeon R9 M280X in general. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		88000 MB/sec
	Difference: 15680 (18%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M280X is quite a bit (about 29%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce 8800 Ultra. (explain)

Radeon R9 M280X		50400 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 11232 (29%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce 8800 Ultra is a better choice, but not by far. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 M280X		14400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 288 (2%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling 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 can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.