Radeon HD 5670 vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 280X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1500 MHz on this model. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5670		61 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 189 Watts (310%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 280X, in theory, should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 5670 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5670		64000 MB/sec
	Difference: 224000 (350%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X should be much (about 602%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5670. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5670		15500 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 93300 (602%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X is a lot (approximately 339%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5670, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5670		6200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21000 (339%)

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 over the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result 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 higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher 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 amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. 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 many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.