GeForce GTX 460 1GB vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 280, which comes with a GPU core 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 SPUs, 112 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 1GB		160 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 90 Watts (56%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 280 should in theory be quite a bit better than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 124800 (108%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 will be a lot (more or less 176%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		37800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 66696 (176%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280 is a better choice, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 1GB		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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the 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 can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video 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 number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.