Radeon HD 7950 vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 280X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 1500 MHz on this specific card. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

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 7950		7731 points
	Difference: 1155 (15%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 280X		294 Sol/s
Radeon HD 7950		235 Sol/s
	Difference: 59 (25%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon HD 7950		21 Mh/s
Radeon R9 280X		21 Mh/s
	Difference: 0 (0%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7950		200 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 280X is 20% quicker than the Radeon HD 7950 in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7950		240000 MB/sec
	Difference: 48000 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X will be a lot (more or less 21%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 7950. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7950		89600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19200 (21%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280X is a better choice, but not by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7950		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1600 (6%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

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