Radeon R9 270 vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 280X, which features a clock frequency of 850 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1500 MHz. It also features a 384-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 2048 SPUs, 128 TAUs, 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 R9 270		5943 points
	Difference: 2943 (50%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 280X		21 Mh/s
Radeon R9 270		15 Mh/s
	Difference: 6 (40%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 270		150 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 280X should be 61% faster than the Radeon R9 270 overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 270		179200 MB/sec
	Difference: 108800 (61%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X will be quite a bit (about 51%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 270. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 270		72000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 36800 (51%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 should be just a bit (approximately 6%) more effective at AA than the Radeon R9 280X, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video 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 amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.