GeForce GT 315 vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 280X, which has 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 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 315		52 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 198 Watts (381%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 280X should be much faster than the GeForce GT 315 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 315		25280 MB/sec
	Difference: 262720 (1039%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X should be quite a bit (approximately 988%) better at AF than the GeForce GT 315. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 315		10000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 98800 (988%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280X is superior to the GeForce GT 315, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 315		5000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 22200 (444%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.