Radeon HD 7870 vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

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

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 HD 7870		6230 points
	Difference: 2656 (43%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 280X		294 Sol/s
Radeon HD 7870		172 Sol/s
	Difference: 122 (71%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 280X		21 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7870		16 Mh/s
	Difference: 5 (31%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (43%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 280X should in theory perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 7870 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 134400 (88%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X should be a lot (approximately 36%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7870. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 28800 (36%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7870 will be a bit (more or less 18%) more effective at AA than the Radeon R9 280X, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		32000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4800 (18%)

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 max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at 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 write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.