GeForce RTX 3060 vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 280X, which has GPU core speed of 850 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1500 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also features 2048 SPUs, 128 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the GeForce RTX 3060 should in theory be a lot better than the Radeon R9 280X in general. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3060		368640 MB/sec
Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
	Difference: 80640 (28%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce RTX 3060 should be quite a bit (more or less 36%) more effective at AF than the Radeon R9 280X. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3060		147840 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 39040 (36%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce RTX 3060 should be a lot (approximately 133%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 280X, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3060		63360 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 36160 (133%)

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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.