GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

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

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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

GeForce GTX 970		10867 points
Radeon R9 280		7961 points
	Difference: 2906 (37%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 970		262 Sol/s
Radeon R9 280		183 Sol/s
	Difference: 79 (43%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 280		22 Mh/s
GeForce GTX 970		19 Mh/s
	Difference: 3 (16%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 105 Watts (72%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 280, in theory, should be a little bit faster than the GeForce GTX 970 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (7%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 is a little bit (about 5%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 280. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4704 (5%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 should be quite a bit (about 125%) more effective at AA than the Radeon R9 280, and capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 37344 (125%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. 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 also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.