GeForce GT 420 vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 280, which has a clock frequency of 933 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also features a 384-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1792 SPUs, 112 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 420		50 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 200 Watts (400%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 280 should in theory be much faster than the GeForce GT 420 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 420		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 211200 (733%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 will be a lot (about 1766%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GT 420. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 420		5600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 98896 (1766%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 will be much (more or less 966%) faster with regards to AA than the GeForce GT 420, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 420		2800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 27056 (966%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics 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 per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines 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 also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.