Radeon HD 7870 vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 280X, which features clock speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 TAUs 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 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

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 280X should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon HD 7870 in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X should be much (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 small bit (approximately 18%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 280X, and will be capable of handling 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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.