Radeon R9 270 vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 280, which features a core clock speed of 933 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also features a 384-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 1792 SPUs, 112 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 280		7961 points
Radeon R9 270		5943 points
	Difference: 2018 (34%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 280		22 Mh/s
Radeon R9 270		15 Mh/s
	Difference: 7 (47%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

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

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 280 should be much faster than the Radeon R9 270 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 270		179200 MB/sec
	Difference: 60800 (34%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 is much (approximately 45%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 270. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 270		72000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32496 (45%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 should be a small bit (approximately 4%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 270, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 270		28800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1056 (4%)

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 (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's 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 in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, 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 the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.