GeForce GTS 450 vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 280X, which has a clock speed of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1500 MHz. It also uses a 384-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 2048 SPUs, 128 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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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

Radeon R9 280X		8886 points
GeForce GTS 450		1453 points
	Difference: 7433 (512%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 450		106 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 144 Watts (136%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 280X should theoretically be much better than the GeForce GTS 450 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 450		57728 MB/sec
	Difference: 230272 (399%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X is a lot (about 334%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the GeForce GTS 450. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		25056 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 83744 (334%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X should be much (more or less 117%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTS 450, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 450		12528 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 14672 (117%)

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 data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.