GeForce GTS 450 1GB vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 280, which comes with GPU clock speed of 933 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1250 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is made up of 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

The Radeon R9 280 should theoretically be much faster than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 is quite a bit (about 317%) faster with regards to AF 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 should be much (approximately 138%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce GTS 450 1GB, and should be capable of handling 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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once 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, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core 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 rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.