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GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

The GeForce GTX 970 has a GPU clock speed of 1050 MHz, and the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory runs at 1750 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1664 Stream Processors, 104 TAUs, and 64 ROPs.

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 280, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 933 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this card. It features 1792 SPUs along with 112 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

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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 just a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 970 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 will be just a bit (more or less 5%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 280. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970 is the winner, and very much so. (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

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GeForce GTX 970

Amazon.com

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Radeon R9 280

Amazon.com

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce GTX 970 Radeon R9 280
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year September 2014 March 2014
Code Name GM204-200 Tahiti Pro
Memory 4096 MB 3072 MB
Core Speed 1050 MHz 933 MHz
Memory Speed 7000 MHz 5000 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 145 watts 250 watts
Bandwidth 224000 MB/sec 240000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 109200 Mtexels/sec 104496 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 67200 Mpixels/sec 29856 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 1664 1792
Texture Mapping Units 104 112
Render Output Units 64 32
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit 384-bit
Fab Process 28 nm 28 nm
Transistors 5200 million 4313 million
Bus PCIe 3.0 x16 PCIe 3.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 11.2 DirectX 11.2
OpenGL Version OpenGL 4.5 OpenGL 4.3

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher 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 most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output 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 get to the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce GTX 970

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon R9 280

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Comments

2 Responses to “GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon R9 280”
AJ says:

So, these two cards are pretty much the same, exept at higher resolutions. I got my r9 280 at $130 after Mail in rebate, making it so that you could get three of these for a little bit more than one of the 970's. Wow.

Dennis says:

No, you can't compare them. The GTX 970 is faster than a R9 290 and takes only a bit over half the power and is also much cooler. Also, the GTX 970 has a 'real world bandwidth' of ~300 GB/sec, what would be ~25% more - it has this compression technique like the new R9 285, just much better. The Texel Rate isn't really important, because even graphics cards years ago didn't have problems with AF anymore - you can try it yourself: Let the game run with 16xAF and then let it run with 4xAF - almost no performance difference but much cleaner picture...

I've had the Sapphire R9 280 Dual-X and now I'm upgrading to a GTX 970. It's a big difference, not only a small. YOu can throw EVERY game on it with MAX details at 1080p and you'll get stable 60fps... On some older games you can even downsample or run at 4K, like Mirror's Edge. With my R9 280 I sometimes didn't even get 60fps with High Settings @ 1080p and 4xMSAA.

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