GeForce GTX 580 vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 280X, which features core clock speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units 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 580		4956 points
	Difference: 3930 (79%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 580		244 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 6 Watts (2%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 280X should be a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 580 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 580		192384 MB/sec
	Difference: 95616 (50%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X should be much (about 120%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 580. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 59392 (120%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 580 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9856 (36%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at 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 the video card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.