GeForce GTX 980 vs Radeon R9 285

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 285, which has GPU core speed of 918 MHz, and 2048 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1375 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 1792 SPUs, 112 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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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

GeForce GTX 980		13552 points
Radeon R9 285		8500 points
	Difference: 5052 (59%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 980		20 Mh/s
Radeon R9 285		18 Mh/s
	Difference: 2 (11%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980		165 Watts
Radeon R9 285		190 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (15%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 980 should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon R9 285 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		224000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 285		176000 MB/sec
	Difference: 48000 (27%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 is quite a bit (more or less 40%) better at AF than the Radeon R9 285. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		144128 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 285		102816 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 41312 (40%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980 should be a lot (more or less 145%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 285, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980		72064 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 285		29376 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 42688 (145%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory per 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 drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.