GeForce GTX 1050 vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 280, which comes with a core clock frequency of 933 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 384-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It 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

Radeon R9 280		7961 points
GeForce GTX 1050		6657 points
	Difference: 1304 (20%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1050		75 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 175 Watts (233%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 280 should in theory be much superior to the GeForce GTX 1050 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 1050		114688 MB/sec
	Difference: 125312 (109%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 is a lot (about 93%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 1050. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 1050		54160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 50336 (93%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 1050 is superior to the Radeon R9 280, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050		43328 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13472 (45%)

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 max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.