GeForce GTX 550 Ti vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 280, which features GPU clock speed of 933 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1250 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is made up of 1792 SPUs, 112 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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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 550 Ti		1897 points
	Difference: 6064 (320%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 550 Ti		116 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 134 Watts (116%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 280 should theoretically perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		98496 MB/sec
	Difference: 141504 (144%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 is a lot (about 263%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		28800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 75696 (263%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 should be a lot (approximately 38%) more effective at AA than the GeForce GTX 550 Ti, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 550 Ti		21600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8256 (38%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better 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 amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.