Geforce GTX 690 vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 280X, which features clock speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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

Geforce GTX 690		13111 points
Radeon R9 280X		8886 points
	Difference: 4225 (48%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
Geforce GTX 690		300 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (20%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Geforce GTX 690 should theoretically be quite a bit better than the Radeon R9 280X in general. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		384512 MB/sec
Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
	Difference: 96512 (34%)

Texel Rate

The Geforce GTX 690 is quite a bit (more or less 115%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 280X. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		234240 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 125440 (115%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Geforce GTX 690 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Geforce GTX 690		58560 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 31360 (115%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

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