Radeon R7 260X vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 280X, which comes with a clock speed of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1500 MHz. It also makes use of a 384-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon R9 280X		8886 points
Radeon R7 260X		4381 points
	Difference: 4505 (103%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 280X		21 Mh/s
Radeon R7 260X		14 Mh/s
	Difference: 7 (50%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 280X		294 Sol/s
Radeon R7 260X		95 Sol/s
	Difference: 199 (209%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 260X		115 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 135 Watts (117%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 280X, in theory, should perform much faster than the Radeon R7 260X overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
Radeon R7 260X		104000 MB/sec
	Difference: 184000 (177%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X should be a lot (approximately 77%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon R7 260X. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 260X		61600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 47200 (77%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X will be a lot (about 55%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R7 260X, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 260X		17600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 9600 (55%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the 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 most pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs 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 output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.