GeForce GTS 450 1GB vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 280, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 933 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1250 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also features 1792 Stream Processors, 112 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 450 1GB		106 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 144 Watts (136%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 280 should be a lot faster than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 182272 (316%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 will be quite a bit (approximately 317%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 79440 (317%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 will be quite a bit (about 138%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB, and also able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450 1GB		12528 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17328 (138%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.