GeForce 8800 GTX vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 280X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1500 MHz on this model. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 GTX		155 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 95 Watts (61%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 280X should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce 8800 GTX in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 GTX		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 201600 (233%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X should be a lot (approximately 196%) better at AF than the GeForce 8800 GTX. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTX		36800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 72000 (196%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280X is superior to the GeForce 8800 GTX, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 GTX		13800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13400 (97%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units 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 a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.