GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 280X, which has GPU core speed of 850 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1500 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also features 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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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 480		3650 points
	Difference: 5236 (143%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 280X should perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 480 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
	Difference: 110592 (62%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X will be quite a bit (approximately 159%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 480. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 66800 (159%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 should be quite a bit (approximately 24%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 280X, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6400 (24%)

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 moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.