GeForce 9800 GTX vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 280X, which has core clock speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9800 GTX		140 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 110 Watts (79%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 280X should in theory be quite a bit superior to the GeForce 9800 GTX overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		70400 MB/sec
	Difference: 217600 (309%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X should be quite a bit (approximately 152%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 9800 GTX. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		43200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 65600 (152%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X should be much (about 152%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9800 GTX, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9800 GTX		10800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16400 (152%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 number of 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 the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.