GeForce GTX Titan Black vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 280X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 1500 MHz on this card. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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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

GeForce GTX Titan Black		11666 points
Radeon R9 280X		8886 points
	Difference: 2780 (31%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the GeForce GTX Titan Black should perform just a bit faster than the Radeon R9 280X in general. (explain)

GeForce GTX Titan Black		336000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
	Difference: 48000 (17%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce GTX Titan Black will be quite a bit (about 96%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon R9 280X. (explain)

GeForce GTX Titan Black		213360 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 104560 (96%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce GTX Titan Black is much (more or less 57%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 280X, and should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

GeForce GTX Titan Black		42672 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15472 (57%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster 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 applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

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