Radeon R9 270X vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 280, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 933 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this specific card. It features 1792 SPUs along with 112 TAUs 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 270X		6590 points
	Difference: 1371 (21%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 280		183 Sol/s
Radeon R9 270X		177 Sol/s
	Difference: 6 (3%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 280		22 Mh/s
Radeon R9 270X		18 Mh/s
	Difference: 4 (22%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 70 Watts (39%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 280 should theoretically be quite a bit superior to the Radeon R9 270X in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 is quite a bit (about 31%) more effective at AF than the Radeon R9 270X. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24496 (31%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 270X is a better choice, but only just. (explain)

Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2144 (7%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.