GeForce GTS 150 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 memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 150		141 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 109 Watts (77%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 280X should theoretically be a lot superior to the GeForce GTS 150 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 150		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 256000 (800%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X will be a lot (more or less 130%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTS 150. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 150		47360 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 61440 (130%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X will be much (approximately 130%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce GTS 150, and also capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 150		11840 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15360 (130%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.