GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon R9 380 4G

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 380 4G, which features GPU core speed of 970 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1425 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1792 SPUs, 112 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 380 4G		190 Watts
GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 46 Watts (24%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 380 4G should be a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 280 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 4G		182400 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
	Difference: 40704 (29%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 380 4G is quite a bit (more or less 126%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 280. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 4G		108640 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 60480 (126%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 380 4G is much (approximately 61%) better at FSAA than the GeForce GTX 280, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 4G		31040 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 11776 (61%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.