GeForce GTS 450 vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 280, which features a core clock speed of 933 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 384-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 1792 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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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 GTS 450		1453 points
	Difference: 6508 (448%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 280 will be 316% faster than the GeForce GTS 450 in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 is a lot (about 317%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTS 450. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 is quite a bit (more or less 138%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GTS 450, and also capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		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 maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the 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 number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.