GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 280, which features GPU core speed of 933 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1250 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also features 1792 Stream Processors, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 14 Watts (6%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 280 should perform quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 280 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
	Difference: 98304 (69%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 should be quite a bit (about 117%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 280. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 56336 (117%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 is quite a bit (about 55%) more effective at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 280, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10592 (55%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.