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GeForce GTX 960 vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

The GeForce GTX 960 features a GPU clock speed of 1127 MHz, and the 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM runs at 1750 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also features 1024 Stream Processors, 64 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 280X, which features GPU core speed of 850 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1500 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is made up of 2048 Stream Processors, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

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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

Radeon R9 280X 8886 points
GeForce GTX 960 7627 points
Difference: 1259 (17%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 280X 294 Sol/s
GeForce GTX 960 154 Sol/s
Difference: 140 (91%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 280X 21 Mh/s
GeForce GTX 960 11 Mh/s
Difference: 10 (91%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 960 120 Watts
Radeon R9 280X 250 Watts
Difference: 130 Watts (108%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 280X should be a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 960 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X 288000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 960 112000 MB/sec
Difference: 176000 (157%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X will be quite a bit (approximately 51%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 960. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X 108800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 960 72128 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 36672 (51%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 960 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 960 36064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280X 27200 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 8864 (33%)

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 960

Amazon.com

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Radeon R9 280X

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 960 Radeon R9 280X
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year January 2015 October 2013
Code Name GM206 Tahiti XTL
Memory 2048 MB 3072 MB
Core Speed 1127 MHz 850 MHz
Memory Speed 7000 MHz 6000 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 120 watts 250 watts
Bandwidth 112000 MB/sec 288000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 72128 Mtexels/sec 108800 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 36064 Mpixels/sec 27200 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 1024 2048
Texture Mapping Units 64 128
Render Output Units 32 32
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 128-bit 384-bit
Fab Process 28 nm 28 nm
Transistors 2940 million 4313 million
Bus PCIe 3.0 x16 PCIe 3.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 12.0 DirectX 11.2
OpenGL Version OpenGL 4.5 OpenGL 4.3

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the 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 are processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs 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 also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

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GeForce GTX 960

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon R9 280X

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

4 Responses to “GeForce GTX 960 vs Radeon R9 280X”
TheAvacado says:

For $50 more(or less), you can get a much much better card with the 280X. Also most 280X's on the market will have a base clock of 950+ MHz. So those looking at the 960 for an entry level card should look at the 280X because for slightly more cash, can get a card that can run most games at 1440p with ease instead of 1080p like the GTX 960.

GreenerThanGrass says:

128-bit and 1024 Unified shaders ("CUDA Cores") is a joke. Another PLACEBO CARD by NVIDIA.

Luke says:

I'm trying to make a PC but I'm not sure which video card to get. Radeon R9 280X or Geforce GTX 960. Any suggestions??

jay says:

I bought two r9 280x over a year ago. IMHO,They run too hot. One burned out after 9 months. Second getting flaky. Looking to nvidia for cooler running cards. Gtx 960 looks OK. But gtx 970 probably on par or better than r9 280x *and* it runs much cooler (less power~=cooler temps... With same cooling scheme)

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