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 makes use of a 384-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 2048 SPUs, 128 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

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

In theory, the Radeon R9 280X is 172% faster than the GeForce GTX 950 in general, due to its greater data rate. (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%) more effective at anisotropic 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 little bit (about 20%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon R9 280X, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (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 megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If 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 are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core 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 per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.