GeForce GTS 450 vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 280X, which comes with 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 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

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 GTS 450		1453 points
	Difference: 7433 (512%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 450		106 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 144 Watts (136%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 280X should be much faster than the GeForce GTS 450 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 230272 (399%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X will be much (approximately 334%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTS 450. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 83744 (334%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X should be a lot (approximately 117%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GTS 450, and will be able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		12528 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14672 (117%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount 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 fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.