GeForce RTX 3060 vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 280, which comes with GPU core speed of 933 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1250 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also features 1792 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce RTX 3060		170 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 80 Watts (47%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce RTX 3060 should be 54% faster than the Radeon R9 280 overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3060		368640 MB/sec
Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
	Difference: 128640 (54%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce RTX 3060 is much (more or less 41%) better at AF than the Radeon R9 280. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3060		147840 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 43344 (41%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce RTX 3060 is a lot (approximately 112%) more effective at AA than the Radeon R9 280, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3060		63360 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 33504 (112%)

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 moved over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher 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 a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.