GeForce GTX 560 vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 280X, which has core clock speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator 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 560		3030 points
	Difference: 5856 (193%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 560		150 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 280X should perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 560 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 560		128128 MB/sec
	Difference: 159872 (125%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X should be quite a bit (more or less 140%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 560. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 560		45360 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 63440 (140%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280X is the winner, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 560		25920 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1280 (5%)

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 transported past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock 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 a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.