GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon R9 M390X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 M390X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 723 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this particular card. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 M390X		125 Watts
GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 111 Watts (89%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 M390X should perform a little bit faster than the GeForce GTX 280 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		160000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
	Difference: 18304 (13%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 M390X is a lot (more or less 92%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 280. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		92544 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 44384 (92%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 M390X should be a small bit (approximately 20%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce GTX 280, and should be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 M390X		23136 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3872 (20%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount 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 handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.