GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 280, which has core clock speeds of 933 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1792 SPUs as well as 112 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

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

GeForce GTX 970		10867 points
Radeon R9 280		7961 points
	Difference: 2906 (37%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

GeForce GTX 970		262 Sol/s
Radeon R9 280		183 Sol/s
	Difference: 79 (43%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 280		22 Mh/s
GeForce GTX 970		19 Mh/s
	Difference: 3 (16%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 970		145 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 105 Watts (72%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 280 should be a small bit faster than the GeForce GTX 970 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 970		224000 MB/sec
	Difference: 16000 (7%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 is a little bit (approximately 5%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 280. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		109200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4704 (5%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 970 will be much (more or less 125%) better at AA than the Radeon R9 280, and also able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce GTX 970		67200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 37344 (125%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 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 AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units 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 applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated 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 drawing the pixels (image) on 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 maximum fill rate.