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Radeon R9 280 vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

The Radeon R9 280 has a GPU clock speed of 933 MHz, and the 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory runs at 1250 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is made up of 1792 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 280X, which features GPU clock speed of 850 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1500 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is made up of 2048 SPUs, 128 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

(No game benchmarks for this combination yet.)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 280X should perform a little 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 should be a little bit (more or less 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

The Radeon R9 280 is just a bit (about 10%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 280X, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (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

Radeon R9 280

Amazon.com

Radeon R9 280X

Amazon.com

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

Model Radeon R9 280 Radeon R9 280X
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year March 2014 October 2013
Code Name Tahiti Pro Tahiti XTL
Fab Process 28 nm 28 nm
Bus PCIe 3.0 x16 PCIe 3.0 x16
Memory 3072 MB 3072 MB
Core Speed 933 MHz 850 MHz
Shader Speed N/A MHz (N/A) MHz
Memory Speed 1250 MHz (5000 MHz effective) 1500 MHz (6000 MHz effective)
Unified Shaders 1792 2048
Texture Mapping Units 112 128
Render Output Units 32 32
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 384-bit 384-bit
DirectX Version DirectX 11.2 DirectX 11.2
OpenGL Version OpenGL 4.3 OpenGL 4.3
Power (Max TDP) 250 watts 250 watts
Shader Model 5.0 5.0
Bandwidth 240000 MB/sec 288000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 104496 Mtexels/sec 108800 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 29856 Mpixels/sec 27200 Mpixels/sec

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output 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.

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