GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon RX 480

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 480, which makes use of a 14 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 1120 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 2000 MHz on this particular card. It features 2304 SPUs as well as 144 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 480		150 Watts
GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 86 Watts (57%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon RX 480 should theoretically be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 280 overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		262144 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
	Difference: 120448 (85%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 should be a lot (approximately 235%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 280. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		161280 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 113120 (235%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon RX 480 is superior to the GeForce GTX 280, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		35840 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 16576 (86%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better 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 can be applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core 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 processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's 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 output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.