GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 280, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 933 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this card. It features 1792 SPUs as well as 112 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 280 should be much faster than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		108800 MB/sec
	Difference: 131200 (121%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 should be quite a bit (about 187%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM). (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		36400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 68096 (187%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 is a lot (more or less 44%) faster with regards to FSAA than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM), and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		20800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9056 (44%)

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 max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.