GeForce GTX 950 vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 280X, which comes with a core clock speed of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also uses a 384-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 2048 SPUs, 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

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 theoretically be quite a bit better than the GeForce GTX 950 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X should be a lot (approximately 121%) better at texture filtering 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 should be a small bit (about 20%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 280X, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, 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 record 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 clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.