GeForce GTS 450 vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

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

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 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

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 280X should theoretically be quite a bit better 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 is a lot (about 334%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTS 450. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280X is a better choice, and very much so. (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 max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on 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.