GeForce GTX 1050 3GB vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 280, which has a clock frequency of 933 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 384-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1792 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		75 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 175 Watts (233%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 280 should theoretically perform a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		86016 MB/sec
	Difference: 153984 (179%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 is a lot (approximately 56%) better at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		66816 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 37680 (56%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB is a better choice, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		33408 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3552 (12%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 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 AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. 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 ability to reach the maximum fill rate.