GeForce GTX 285 2GB vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 280, which has GPU clock speed of 933 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1250 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1792 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 285 2GB		204 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 46 Watts (23%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 280 should in theory be much better than the GeForce GTX 285 2GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 285 2GB		158976 MB/sec
	Difference: 81024 (51%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 will be quite a bit (approximately 102%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 285 2GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 285 2GB		51840 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 52656 (102%)

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 GTX 285 2GB		20736 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9120 (44%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster 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 are processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at 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 chip could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.