GeForce GTX 950 vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 280X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1500 MHz on this card. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator 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

Radeon R9 280X		8886 points
GeForce GTX 950		6536 points
	Difference: 2350 (36%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 280X		21 Mh/s
GeForce GTX 950		10 Mh/s
	Difference: 11 (110%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 280X		294 Sol/s
GeForce GTX 950		155 Sol/s
	Difference: 139 (90%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 950		90 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 160 Watts (178%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 280X should in theory be much superior to the GeForce GTX 950 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 950		105728 MB/sec
	Difference: 182272 (172%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X is much (more or less 121%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTX 950. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 950		49152 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 59648 (121%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 950 will be just a bit (about 20%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 280X, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950		32768 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5568 (20%)

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 max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better 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 number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

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