Radeon R9 280X2 vs GeForce GTX 980 SLI Mobile

Primary details

GPU architecture, market segment, value for money and other general parameters compared.

Place in the ranking114not rated
Place by popularitynot in top-100not in top-100
Power efficiency8.29no data
ArchitectureMaxwell (2014−2017)GCN 1.0 (2011−2020)
GPU code nameN16E-GXX SLITahiti
Market segmentLaptopDesktop
Release date22 September 2015 (9 years ago)no data (2024 years ago)

Detailed specifications

General parameters such as number of shaders, GPU core base clock and boost clock speeds, manufacturing process, texturing and calculation speed. Note that power consumption of some graphics cards can well exceed their nominal TDP, especially when overclocked.

Pipelines / CUDA cores40962048
Core clock speed1126 MHz950 MHz
Boost clock speed1228 MHz1000 MHz
Number of transistors10400 Million4,313 million
Manufacturing process technology28 nm28 nm
Power consumption (TDP)330 Watt375 Watt
Texture fill rateno data128.0
Floating-point processing powerno data4.096 TFLOPS
ROPsno data32
TMUsno data128

Form factor & compatibility

Information on compatibility with other computer components. Useful when choosing a future computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. For desktop graphics cards it's interface and bus (motherboard compatibility), additional power connectors (power supply compatibility).

Laptop sizelargeno data
Interfaceno dataPCIe 3.0 x16
Lengthno data315 mm
Widthno data2-slot
Supplementary power connectorsno data3x 8-pin
SLI options+-

VRAM capacity and type

Parameters of VRAM installed: its type, size, bus, clock and resulting bandwidth. Integrated GPUs have no dedicated video RAM and use a shared part of system RAM.

Memory typeGDDR5GDDR5
Maximum RAM amount2x 8 GB3 GB
Memory bus width256 Bit384 Bit
Memory clock speed3500 MHz1500 MHz
Memory bandwidthno data288.0 GB/s
Shared memory--

Connectivity and outputs

Types and number of video connectors present on the reviewed GPUs. As a rule, data in this section is precise only for desktop reference ones (so-called Founders Edition for NVIDIA chips). OEM manufacturers may change the number and type of output ports, while for notebook cards availability of certain video outputs ports depends on the laptop model rather than on the card itself.

Display Connectorsno data6x mini-DisplayPort 1.2
G-SYNC support+-

API compatibility

List of supported 3D and general-purpose computing APIs, including their specific versions.

DirectX12_112 (11_1)
Shader Modelno data6.5 (5.1)
OpenGLno data4.6
OpenCLno data2.1 (1.2)
Vulkan-1.2.170
CUDA+-

Pros & cons summary


Power consumption (TDP) 330 Watt 375 Watt

GTX 980 SLI Mobile has 13.6% lower power consumption.

We couldn't decide between GeForce GTX 980 SLI Mobile and Radeon R9 280X2. We've got no test results to judge.

Be aware that GeForce GTX 980 SLI Mobile is a notebook card while Radeon R9 280X2 is a desktop one.


Should you still have questions concerning choice between the reviewed GPUs, ask them in Comments section, and we shall answer.

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NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 SLI Mobile
GeForce GTX 980 SLI Mobile
AMD Radeon R9 280X2
Radeon R9 280X2

Comparisons with similar GPUs

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Community ratings

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3.3 65 votes

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Questions & comments

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