Radeon R9 270X vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 280, which has core clock speeds of 933 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1792 SPUs as well as 112 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

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

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 280 should in theory be much 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 (more or less 31%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 270X. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270X should be a small bit (more or less 7%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 280, and able to handle higher resolutions better. (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 largest amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better 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 are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock 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 applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.