GeForce GTX 950 vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare those specs 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

Radeon R9 280		7961 points
GeForce GTX 950		6536 points
	Difference: 1425 (22%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 280		22 Mh/s
GeForce GTX 950		10 Mh/s
	Difference: 12 (120%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 280		183 Sol/s
GeForce GTX 950		155 Sol/s
	Difference: 28 (18%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 950		90 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 160 Watts (178%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 280 is 127% faster than the GeForce GTX 950 overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 950		105728 MB/sec
	Difference: 134272 (127%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 should be quite a bit (about 113%) better at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 950. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 950		49152 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 55344 (113%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 950 is the winner, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

GeForce GTX 950		32768 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2912 (10%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called 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 memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.