Radeon R9 280 vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare those specs 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

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 280		7961 points
	Difference: 925 (12%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 280X		294 Sol/s
Radeon R9 280		183 Sol/s
	Difference: 111 (61%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 280		22 Mh/s
Radeon R9 280X		21 Mh/s
	Difference: 1 (5%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 280X should be a small bit faster than the Radeon R9 280 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
	Difference: 48000 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X will be a little bit (about 4%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 280. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4304 (4%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280 is the winner, but only just. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2656 (10%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of 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 must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed 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 higher this number, the better the graphics 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 that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure 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 outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.