NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 vs AMD Radeon R9 280X

Compare NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 4 GB vs AMD Radeon R9 280X 3 GB, specs and GPU benchmark score. Which is the better graphics card for the money?

Benchmark Score
Other Benchmarks
Specifications
Comments (0)
Popular Comparisons

GPU Comparison

Quickly search and compare graphics cards

Benchmark Score

Overall Score

General gaming and workstation score

2262 points

34% slightly better overall score

1687 points

Flux Core frame rate

Volumetric ray casting test, a computationally expensive method of rendering high-quality scenes

47 FPS

7 FPS slightly higher Flux Core frame rate

40 FPS

Electron frame rate

Randomly generated noise sphere test

35 FPS

10 FPS significantly higher Electron frame rate

25 FPS

City frame rate

Procedurally generated city scene with voxel rendering

31 FPS

35 FPS

4 FPS slightly higher City frame rate

Clouds frame rate

Real-time noise calculation and ray marching test

28 FPS

14 FPS significantly higher Clouds frame rate

14 FPS

Free GPU Benchmark

Want to compare your graphics card against the GeForce GTX 970 and the Radeon R9 280X? Download our free and quick PC Performance Test.

Download GPU Benchmark

Other Benchmarks

3DMark Graphics score

High-end graphics benchmark

3647 points

55% significantly higher 3DMark Graphics score

2350 points

Specifications

Core Clock Speed

Nominal chip frequency

1050 MHz

23% slightly higher core clock speed

850 MHz

Boost Clock Speed

Higher turbo frequency when power conditions are met

1178 MHz

17% slightly higher boost clock speed

1000 MHz

Memory

Onboard memory size for textures and vertices

4 GiB

33% slightly more memory

3 GiB

Memory Bus Width

Number of parallel lines to the memory chips

256 Bit

384 Bit

49% significantly larger memory bus width

Memory Bandwidth

Data transfer speed between GPU core and memory

224.4 GB/s

288 GB/s

28% slightly higher memory bandwidth

TDP

Thermal Design Power: Measure of heat generated by the GPU

145 W

72% significantly lower TDP

250 W

Pixel Rate

Number of pixels that can be rendered per second

65.97 Gigapixels/s

106% significantly higher pixel rate

32 Gigapixels/s

Texture Rate

Number of textured pixels that can be rendered per second

122.5 Gigatexels/s

128 Gigatexels/s

4% slightly higher texture rate

Floating Point Performance

Raw number of floating point operations per second

3.92 TFLOPS

4.10 TFLOPS

4% slightly better floating point performance

Shading Units

Number of processors dedicated to shader processing

1664

2048

23% slightly more shading units

Texture Mapping Units

Number of processors dedicated to applying textures

104

128

23% slightly more texture mapping units

Render Output Processors

Number of processors dedicated to final pixel rendering

75% significantly more render output processors

Other details

Rank

Ranking in the hardwareDB database

193rd of 586

226th of 586

Family

The product line

Radeon R9 200 Series

Release date

The official date of release of this chip

2014 September

Memory Type

The type of memory used by this chip

GDDR5

DirectX Support

Maximum version of DirectX supported

12.0

OpenGL Support

Maximum version of OpenGL supported

4.5

GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon R9 280X comparison

According to the hardwareDB Benchmark, the GeForce GTX 970 GPU is faster than the Radeon R9 280X in gaming.

Our database shows that the GeForce GTX 970 has a slightly higher core clock speed. The core clock speed (or base speed) is the frequency at which the GPU core runs. This metric makes sense when comparing GPUs of a similar architecture or generation. In addition, the GeForce GTX 970 also has a slightly higher boost clock speed. This is a frequency that can be reached if the GPU is cooled sufficiently and has enough power.

Furthermore, the spec sheet for both these GPUs show that the GeForce GTX 970 has slightly more memory with 4 GiB of memory compared to 3 GiB. Memory size doesn't directly affect performance, but too little memory will certainly degrade gaming performance.

In addition, the GeForce GTX 970 has a significantly lower TDP at 145 W when compared to the Radeon R9 280X at 250 W. This is not a measure of performance, but rather the amount of heat generated by the chip when running at its highest speed.

In terms of raw gaming performance in our GPU benchmark, the GeForce GTX 970 is better than the Radeon R9 280X.