Radeon HD 6790 vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 280X, which comes with a clock frequency of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1500 MHz. It also features a 384-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, 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 6790		2150 points
	Difference: 6736 (313%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6790		150 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 280X should in theory be much superior to the Radeon HD 6790 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
	Difference: 153600 (114%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X is much (approximately 224%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 6790. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 75200 (224%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280X is superior to the Radeon HD 6790, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 13760 (102%)

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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the 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 number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its 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 - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.