GeForce GTX 280 vs Radeon RX 470

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 470, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 926 MHz, and 8192 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1650 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 2048 Stream Processors, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 470		120 Watts
GeForce GTX 280		236 Watts
	Difference: 116 Watts (97%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon RX 470 should be quite a bit faster than the GeForce GTX 280 overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 470		211200 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 280		141696 MB/sec
	Difference: 69504 (49%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 470 will be a lot (approximately 146%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 280. (explain)

Radeon RX 470		118528 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		48160 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 70368 (146%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 470 should be a lot (about 54%) better at anti-aliasing than the GeForce GTX 280, and will be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon RX 470		29632 Mpixels/sec
GeForce GTX 280		19264 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10368 (54%)

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 transferred across the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

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