GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 280X, which has a GPU core clock speed of 850 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1500 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is comprised of 2048 Stream Processors, 128 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

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 280X		8886 points
	Difference: 1981 (22%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 280X		294 Sol/s
GeForce GTX 970		262 Sol/s
	Difference: 32 (12%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 280X		21 Mh/s
GeForce GTX 970		19 Mh/s
	Difference: 2 (11%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 280X should perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 970 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
	Difference: 64000 (29%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 should be a small bit (approximately 0%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon R9 280X. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 400 (0%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 970 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 40000 (147%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure 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 drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.