GeForce GTX 660 vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 280, which comes with GPU core speed of 933 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1250 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1792 SPUs, 112 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon R9 280		7961 points
GeForce GTX 660		5063 points
	Difference: 2898 (57%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 660		140 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 110 Watts (79%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 280 should theoretically be much better than the GeForce GTX 660 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 660		144192 MB/sec
	Difference: 95808 (66%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 should be much (approximately 33%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 660. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 660		78400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 26096 (33%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 is quite a bit (about 27%) better at AA than the GeForce GTX 660, and able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 660		23520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6336 (27%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock 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 in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the 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 - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill 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.