Radeon HD 7850 vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 280X, which uses 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 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 R9 280X		8886 points
Radeon HD 7850		5200 points
	Difference: 3686 (71%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 280X		294 Sol/s
Radeon HD 7850		171 Sol/s
	Difference: 123 (72%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 280X		21 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7850		13 Mh/s
	Difference: 8 (62%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7850		130 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 120 Watts (92%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 280X will be 88% quicker than the Radeon HD 7850 in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 134400 (88%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X should be quite a bit (about 98%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 7850. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 53760 (98%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 7850 should be a little bit (more or less 1%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 280X, and able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 320 (1%)

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 information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core 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 quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.