GeForce GTX 1050 3GB vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 280, which features a core clock frequency of 933 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 384-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 1792 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		75 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 175 Watts (233%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 280 should in theory be a lot faster than the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		86016 MB/sec
	Difference: 153984 (179%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 should be a lot (about 56%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		66816 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 37680 (56%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 1050 3GB is a better choice, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1050 3GB		33408 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3552 (12%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at 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 the video card could possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.