GeForce 8800 Ultra vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

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

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 8800 Ultra		171 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 79 Watts (46%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 280X should theoretically be much superior to the GeForce 8800 Ultra in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		103680 MB/sec
	Difference: 184320 (178%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X should be a lot (about 178%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce 8800 Ultra. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		39168 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 69632 (178%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280X is superior to the GeForce 8800 Ultra, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra		14688 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12512 (85%)

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 maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied 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 card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.