GeForce GTX 580 3GB vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 280, which comes with 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 comprised of 1792 Stream Processors, 112 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		244 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 6 Watts (2%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 280 should perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		192384 MB/sec
	Difference: 47616 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 is a lot (about 111%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 580 3GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 580 3GB		49408 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 55088 (111%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 580 3GB will be much (more or less 24%) more effective at AA than the Radeon R9 280, and able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 580 3GB		37056 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 7200 (24%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.