GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 280X, which has GPU clock speed of 850 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1500 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is comprised of 2048 Stream Processors, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB		350 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (40%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB is 224% quicker than the Radeon R9 280X in general, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB		934298 MB/sec
Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
	Difference: 646298 (224%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB should be a lot (more or less 224%) better at AF than the Radeon R9 280X. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB		352800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 244000 (224%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3080 12 GB		141120 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 113920 (419%)

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 largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is calculated 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 texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant 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.