GeForce GTX 650 vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 280X, which has a clock speed of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also features a 384-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon R9 280X		8886 points
GeForce GTX 650		2263 points
	Difference: 6623 (293%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 650		64 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 186 Watts (291%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 280X should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 650 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 650		80000 MB/sec
	Difference: 208000 (260%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X should be a lot (more or less 221%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 650. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 650		33856 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 74944 (221%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X will be a lot (more or less 61%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 650, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 650		16928 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10272 (61%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core 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 lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.