GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 280X, which features core speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		150 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 280X should be 165% quicker than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM) overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		108800 MB/sec
	Difference: 179200 (165%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X should be quite a bit (more or less 199%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM). (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		36400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 72400 (199%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X should be much (about 31%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 460 (OEM), and will be able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 460 (OEM)		20800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6400 (31%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's 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 fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.