Radeon HD 7950 vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 280X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1500 MHz on this particular card. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 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 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 should be just a bit faster than the Radeon HD 7950 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X is much (approximately 21%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 7950. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X is a little bit (more or less 6%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7950, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.