GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 280, which comes with a core clock speed of 933 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also features a 384-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised 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 480		3650 points
	Difference: 4311 (118%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 280 is 35% faster than the GeForce GTX 480 in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
	Difference: 62592 (35%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 should be a lot (approximately 149%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 480. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 62496 (149%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 480 will be a little bit (more or less 13%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 280, and will be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3744 (13%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses 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, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number 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 output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.