GeForce GTX 980M vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 280X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1500 MHz on this particular model. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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 980M		9476 points
Radeon R9 280X		8886 points
	Difference: 590 (7%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 280X		294 Sol/s
GeForce GTX 980M		155 Sol/s
	Difference: 139 (90%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 980M		100 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 150 Watts (150%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 280X should in theory be quite a bit superior to the GeForce GTX 980M in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 980M		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 160000 (125%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X is a bit (about 9%) better at AF than the GeForce GTX 980M. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 980M		99648 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 9152 (9%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 980M will be much (approximately 144%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 280X, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

GeForce GTX 980M		66432 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 39232 (144%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high 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 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 applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs 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 rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.