GeForce GTX 275 vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 280X, which features core clock speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 275		219 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 31 Watts (14%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 280X should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the GeForce GTX 275 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 275		127008 MB/sec
	Difference: 160992 (127%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X will be much (approximately 115%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 275. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 275		50640 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 58160 (115%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X should be a lot (about 53%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce GTX 275, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 275		17724 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9476 (53%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.