Radeon R7 240 vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 280X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1500 MHz on this particular model. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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 240		1218 points
	Difference: 7668 (630%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 240		30 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 220 Watts (733%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 280X should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the Radeon R7 240 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
Radeon R7 240		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 259200 (900%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X is quite a bit (approximately 645%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R7 240. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 240		14600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 94200 (645%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280X is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 240		5840 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21360 (366%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill 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 get to the maximum fill rate.