Radeon HD 6870 vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 280X, which features a core clock frequency of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1500 MHz. It also uses a 384-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 2048 SPUs, 128 TAUs, 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 6870		2870 points
	Difference: 6016 (210%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 99 Watts (66%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 280X is 114% quicker than the Radeon HD 6870 in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
	Difference: 153600 (114%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X is quite a bit (approximately 116%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 6870. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 58400 (116%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 6870 will be just a bit (about 6%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 280X, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280X		27200 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 information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of 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 speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core 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 also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.