GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 280X, which features a clock frequency of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also uses a 384-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 14 Watts (6%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 280X should theoretically perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 280 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
	Difference: 146304 (103%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X is quite a bit (approximately 126%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 280. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 60640 (126%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X should be quite a bit (about 41%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 280, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7936 (41%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.