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Gaming Performance Comparison

In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 MSI Lightning Edition are noticeably better than the AMD Radeon R9 280X Sapphire Toxic 3GB OC Edition.

The R9 280X has a 120 MHz higher core clock speed than the GTX 780, but the GTX 780 has 64 more Texture Mapping Units than the R9 280X. As a result, the GTX 780 exhibits a 47.4 GTexel/s better Texture Fill Rate than the R9 280X. This still holds weight but shader performance is generally more relevant, particularly since both of these GPUs support at least DirectX 10.

The R9 280X has a 120 MHz higher core clock speed than the GTX 780, but the GTX 780 has 16 more Render Output Units than the R9 280X. As a result, the GTX 780 exhibits a 11.8 GPixel/s better Pixel Fill Rate than the R9 280X. However, both GPUs support DirectX 9 or above, and pixeling performance is only really relevant when comparing older cards.

The R9 280X was released less than a year after the GTX 780, and so they are likely to have similar driver support for optimizing performance when running the latest games.

Both GPUs exhibit very powerful performance, so it probably isn't worth upgrading from one to the other, as both are capable of running even the most demanding games at the highest settings.

The Radeon R9 280X Sapphire Toxic 3GB OC Edition and the GeForce GTX 780 MSI Lightning Edition have the same amount of video memory, but are likely to provide slightly different experiences when displaying game textures at high resolutions.

The R9 280X has 18.8 GB/sec greater memory bandwidth than the GTX 780, which means that the memory performance of the R9 280X is slightly better than the GTX 780.

The Radeon R9 280X Sapphire Toxic 3GB OC Edition has 2048 Shader Processing Units and the GeForce GTX 780 MSI Lightning Edition has 2304. However, the actual shader performance of the R9 280X is 2120 and the actual shader performance of the GTX 780 is 2380. The GTX 780 having 260 better shader performance and an altogether better performance when taking into account other relevant data means that the GTX 780 delivers a noticeably smoother and more efficient experience when processing graphical data than the R9 280X.

The Radeon R9 280X Sapphire Toxic 3GB OC Edition requires 250 Watts to run but there is no entry for the GeForce GTX 780 MSI Lightning Edition. We would recommend a PSU with at least 600 Watts for the GTX 780, but we do not have a recommended PSU wattage for the R9 280X.

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GPU Core Details

Core Speed1100 MHzvs980 MHz
ArchitectureGCN 1.1 Tahiti XTLKepler GK110-300-A1
Notebook GPUnono
SLI/Crossfireyesvsyes
Dedicatedyesvsyes
Release Date08 Oct 201330 Aug 2013
GPU LinkGD LinkGD Link
Approved
Comparison

GPU Memory

Memory3072 MBvs3072 MB
Memory Speed1600 MHzvs1502 MHz
Memory Bus384 Bitvs384 Bit
Memory TypeGDDR5vsGDDR5
Memory Bandwidth307.2GB/secvs288.4GB/sec
L2 Cache 768 KB vs green tick 1536 KB
Comparison

GPU Display

Shader Processing Units2048vs2304
Actual Shader Performance2120vs2380
Technology28nmvs28nm
Texture Mapping Units128vs192
Texture Rate140.8 GTexel/svs188.2 GTexel/s
Render Output Units32vs48
Pixel Rate35.2 GPixel/svs47 GPixel/s
Comparison

GPU Display Tech

DirectX11.2vs11.1
Shader Model5.0vs5.0
Open GL4.3vs4.3
Max Resolution (WxH)4096x2160vs4096x2160
VGA Connections0vs0
DVI Connections1vs2
HDMI Connections1vs1
Comparison

GPU Power Requirements

Max Power250 Watts-

GPU Supporting Hardware

Recommended RAM8 GBvs12 GB
Recommended Screen Size1920x10802560x1600
Recommended PSU-600 Watts

Gaming Performance Value

Performance Value

GPU Mini Review

Mini ReviewRadeon R9 280X Sapphire Toxic 3GB OC Edition is a special edition of the high-end Radeon R9 280X.
This edition comes with a custom cooling system called "Tri-X", which reduces the card's temperature under load, significantly and comes overclocked out of the box in the central unit that was increased from 850MHz to 1100MHz, while the Boost clock is now of 1150MHz. Also, the operating memory clock is now of 1600MHz.
Benchmarks indicate a 6% performance boost over the standard edition and so this card surpasses a GeForce GTX 770 easily.
GeForce GTX 780 MSI Lightning Edition is a special edition of the high-end GeForce GTX 780.
This edition comes with a custom dual fan cooling solution which by itself should allow a slight performance boost, as GeForce GTX 780 benefits from the GPU Boost 2.0 technology.
Also, it has been overclocked out of the box from 863MHz to 980MHz while its boost clock is now of 1033MHz. The memory clock was left untouched.
Benchmarks indicate a 8% performance boost when compared to the reference card.
Recommended CPUAMD FX-6120
AMD Phenom II X4 B70
Intel Core i3-4360 3.7GHz
Intel Core i5-4570TE 2.7GHz
AMD Phenom II X4 970
Intel Core i7-4771 4-Core 3.5GHz
Intel Core i7-4770R 4-Core 3.2GHz
Intel Core i7-4770 4-Core 3.4GHz
Intel Core i7-4770K 4-Core 3.5GHz
Intel Core i7-990X 6-Core 3.47GHz
Possible GPU Upgrades--
GPU Variants--