GeForce GTX 460 2GB vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 280X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1500 MHz on this specific model. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 2GB		160 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 90 Watts (56%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 280X should be a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 172800 (150%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X will be much (more or less 188%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 71000 (188%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X is quite a bit (about 26%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 460 2GB, and able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 2GB		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5600 (26%)

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 max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock 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 most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as 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 of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.