GeForce GTX 1660 Ti vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 280, which features core speeds of 933 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 1792 SPUs along with 112 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce GTX 1660 Ti		120 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 130 Watts (108%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti will be 23% quicker than the Radeon R9 280 in general, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1660 Ti		294912 MB/sec
Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
	Difference: 54912 (23%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX 1660 Ti should be much (more or less 38%) better at AF than the Radeon R9 280. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1660 Ti		144000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 39504 (38%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti is superior to the Radeon R9 280, by a large margin. (explain)

GeForce GTX 1660 Ti		72000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 42144 (141%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.