GeForce GTX 465 vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 280X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1500 MHz on this card. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 465		200 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 280X should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the GeForce GTX 465 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 465		102592 MB/sec
	Difference: 185408 (181%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X should be much (more or less 307%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 465. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 465		26708 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 82092 (307%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X will be a lot (approximately 40%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GTX 465, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 465		19424 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7776 (40%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.