GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon RX 470

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon RX 470, which has a clock speed of 926 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1650 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 14 nm design. It is made up of 2048 SPUs, 128 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 470		120 Watts
GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 116 Watts (97%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon RX 470 should in theory be a lot better than the GeForce GTX 280 overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 470		211200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
	Difference: 69504 (49%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 470 is a lot (approximately 146%) more effective at AF than the GeForce GTX 280. (explain)

Radeon RX 470		118528 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 70368 (146%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 470 should be much (about 54%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 280, and also should be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon RX 470		29632 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10368 (54%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's 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 rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.