GeForce GTX 460 vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 280, which comes with a core clock frequency of 933 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also uses a 384-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 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 460		2557 points
	Difference: 5404 (211%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460		150 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 280 should theoretically perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 460 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460		86400 MB/sec
	Difference: 153600 (178%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 is much (approximately 176%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 460. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460		16200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13656 (84%)

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 largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied per second. This number is worked out 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 graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video 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 number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also 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, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.