GeForce GTX 590 vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 280X, which features a core clock speed of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also features a 384-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon R9 280X		8886 points
GeForce GTX 590		6680 points
	Difference: 2206 (33%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
GeForce GTX 590		365 Watts
	Difference: 115 Watts (46%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the GeForce GTX 590 should in theory be a small bit better than the Radeon R9 280X in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		328320 MB/sec
Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
	Difference: 40320 (14%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X should be much (approximately 40%) more effective at texture filtering than the GeForce GTX 590. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
GeForce GTX 590		77696 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 31104 (40%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX 590 will be quite a bit (about 114%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 280X, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

GeForce GTX 590		58272 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 31072 (114%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

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