GeForce GTS 150 vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 280X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1500 MHz on this particular card. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTS 150		141 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 109 Watts (77%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 280X should theoretically be a lot better than the GeForce GTS 150 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
GeForce GTS 150		32000 MB/sec
	Difference: 256000 (800%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X is much (more or less 130%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce GTS 150. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTS 150		47360 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 61440 (130%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X is a lot (about 130%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTS 150, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTS 150		11840 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15360 (130%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated 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 video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the clock 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 also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.