GeForce GTX 480 vs Radeon R9 285

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 285, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 918 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 1375 MHz on this specific model. It features 1792 SPUs as well as 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

Radeon R9 285		8500 points
GeForce GTX 480		3650 points
	Difference: 4850 (133%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 285		190 Watts
GeForce GTX 480		250 Watts
	Difference: 60 Watts (32%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce GTX 480 should in theory be a bit faster than the Radeon R9 285 overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		177408 MB/sec
Radeon R9 285		176000 MB/sec
	Difference: 1408 (1%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 285 is quite a bit (about 145%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 480. (explain)

Radeon R9 285		102816 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 480		42000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 60816 (145%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 480 is superior to the Radeon R9 285, though only just barely. (explain)

GeForce GTX 480		33600 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 285		29376 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4224 (14%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the 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 in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.