Radeon HD 7950 vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 280X, which comes with a clock frequency of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also features a 384-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation 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

The Radeon R9 280X should in theory be 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 will be a lot (more or less 21%) more effective 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

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280X is a better choice, but only just. (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 largest amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.