GeForce GTX 1660 Ti vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 280X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1500 MHz on this card. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1660 Ti		120 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 130 Watts (108%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti should be just a bit faster than the Radeon R9 280X overall. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1660 Ti		294912 MB/sec
Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
	Difference: 6912 (2%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1660 Ti should be quite a bit (more or less 32%) better at AF than the Radeon R9 280X. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1660 Ti		144000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 35200 (32%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1660 Ti should be a lot (about 165%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 280X, and should be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1660 Ti		72000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 44800 (165%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is calculated 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 graphics 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 maximum amount of pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. 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, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.