GeForce GT 320 vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 280, which comes with GPU core speed of 933 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1250 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also features 1792 SPUs, 112 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GT 320		43 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 207 Watts (481%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 280 will be 849% quicker than the GeForce GT 320 in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
GeForce GT 320		25280 MB/sec
	Difference: 214720 (849%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 should be much (more or less 706%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GT 320. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GT 320		12960 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 91536 (706%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GT 320		4320 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 25536 (591%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it must 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, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.