Radeon HD 7990 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 memory works at a frequency of 1500 MHz on this card. It features 2048 SPUs along with 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 HD 7990		15520 points
Radeon R9 280X		8886 points
	Difference: 6634 (75%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon HD 7990		32 Mh/s
Radeon R9 280X		21 Mh/s
	Difference: 11 (52%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon HD 7990		513 Sol/s
Radeon R9 280X		294 Sol/s
	Difference: 219 (74%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
Radeon HD 7990		375 Watts
	Difference: 125 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 7990 should theoretically perform a lot faster than the Radeon R9 280X overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990		576000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
	Difference: 288000 (100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7990 will be a lot (more or less 124%) more effective at AF than the Radeon R9 280X. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990		243200 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 134400 (124%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7990 will be quite a bit (approximately 124%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 280X, and also capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 7990		60800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 33600 (124%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.