GeForce GTX 1080 vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 280X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1500 MHz on this particular card. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 Texture Address Units 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

GeForce GTX 1080		21942 points
Radeon R9 280X		8886 points
	Difference: 13056 (147%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 1080		553 Sol/s
Radeon R9 280X		294 Sol/s
	Difference: 259 (88%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 280X		21 Mh/s
GeForce GTX 1080		20 Mh/s
	Difference: 1 (5%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1080		180 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 70 Watts (39%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 1080 should in theory be a bit superior to the Radeon R9 280X overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1080		327680 MB/sec
Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
	Difference: 39680 (14%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1080 is a lot (approximately 136%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 280X. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1080		257120 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 148320 (136%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1080 should be much (approximately 278%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 280X, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1080		102848 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 75648 (278%)

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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. 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 rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.