GeForce RTX 3050 vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 280, which comes with a clock speed of 933 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also uses a 384-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1792 SPUs, 112 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce RTX 3050		130 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 120 Watts (92%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 280 should in theory be a bit better than the GeForce RTX 3050 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
GeForce RTX 3050		229376 MB/sec
	Difference: 10624 (5%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce RTX 3050 will be a bit (approximately 19%) better at AF than the Radeon R9 280. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3050		124160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19664 (19%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce RTX 3050 is superior to the Radeon R9 280, and very much so. (explain)

GeForce RTX 3050		49664 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19808 (66%)

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 information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, 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 can be applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.