AMD Radeon R9 280X vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M

Compare AMD Radeon R9 280X 3 GB vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M 4 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

1687 points

2% slightly better overall score

1650 points

Flux Core frame rate

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

40 FPS

8 FPS slightly higher Flux Core frame rate

32 FPS

Electron frame rate

Randomly generated noise sphere test

25 FPS

0 FPS slightly higher Electron frame rate

City frame rate

Procedurally generated city scene with voxel rendering

35 FPS

13 FPS significantly higher City frame rate

22 FPS

Clouds frame rate

Real-time noise calculation and ray marching test

14 FPS

21 FPS

7 FPS significantly higher Clouds frame rate

Free GPU Benchmark

Want to compare your graphics card against the Radeon R9 280X and the GeForce GTX 980M? Download our free and quick PC Performance Test.

Download GPU Benchmark

Other Benchmarks

3DMark Graphics score

High-end graphics benchmark

2350 points

2939 points

25% slightly higher 3DMark Graphics score

Specifications

Core Clock Speed

Nominal chip frequency

850 MHz

1038 MHz

22% slightly higher core clock speed

Boost Clock Speed

Higher turbo frequency when power conditions are met

1000 MHz

1127 MHz

12% slightly higher boost clock speed

Memory

Onboard memory size for textures and vertices

3 GiB

4 GiB

33% slightly more memory

Memory Bus Width

Number of parallel lines to the memory chips

384 Bit

49% significantly larger memory bus width

256 Bit

Memory Bandwidth

Data transfer speed between GPU core and memory

288 GB/s

79% significantly higher memory bandwidth

160.4 GB/s

TDP

Thermal Design Power: Measure of heat generated by the GPU

250 W

100 W

150% significantly lower TDP

Pixel Rate

Number of pixels that can be rendered per second

32 Gigapixels/s

72.13 Gigapixels/s

125% significantly higher pixel rate

Texture Rate

Number of textured pixels that can be rendered per second

128 Gigatexels/s

18% slightly higher texture rate

108.2 Gigatexels/s

Floating Point Performance

Raw number of floating point operations per second

4.10 TFLOPS

18% slightly better floating point performance

3.46 TFLOPS

Shading Units

Number of processors dedicated to shader processing

2048

33% slightly more shading units

1536

Texture Mapping Units

Number of processors dedicated to applying textures

128

33% slightly more texture mapping units

Render Output Processors

Number of processors dedicated to final pixel rendering

100% significantly more render output processors

Other details

Rank

Ranking in the hardwareDB database

226th of 586

230th of 586

Family

The product line

Radeon R9 200 Series

Release date

The official date of release of this chip

2014 October

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

Radeon R9 280X vs GeForce GTX 980M benchmarks

In our benchmarks, the Radeon R9 280X beats the GeForce GTX 980M in gaming performance.

The GeForce GTX 980M 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 980M also has a slightly higher boost clock speed: the maximum frequency the chip can reach if power delivery and thermals allow.

As stated by the manufacturer, the GeForce GTX 980M has slightly more memory with 4 GiB of memory compared to 3 GiB. Lots of memory is good when playing at high resolutions or with many monitors.

In addition, the GeForce GTX 980M has a significantly lower TDP at 100 W when compared to the Radeon R9 280X at 250 W. TDP (Thermal Design Power) measures total heat output from the chip.

In terms of raw gaming performance in our GPU benchmark, the Radeon R9 280X is better than the GeForce GTX 980M.