GeForce GTX 1060 3GB vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 280X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1500 MHz on this particular card. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

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.

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 280X		294 Sol/s
GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		290 Sol/s
	Difference: 4 (1%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 280X		21 Mh/s
GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		19 Mh/s
	Difference: 2 (11%)

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		12185 points
Radeon R9 280X		8886 points
	Difference: 3299 (37%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		120 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 130 Watts (108%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 280X should theoretically perform much faster than the GeForce GTX 1060 3GB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		196608 MB/sec
	Difference: 91392 (46%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X will be a little bit (approximately 0%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 1060 3GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		108432 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 368 (0%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 1060 3GB is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1060 3GB		72288 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 45088 (166%)

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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.