Radeon R7 260X vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 280, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 933 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this particular card. It features 1792 SPUs as well as 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 R7 260X		4381 points
	Difference: 3580 (82%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 280		22 Mh/s
Radeon R7 260X		14 Mh/s
	Difference: 8 (57%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 280		183 Sol/s
Radeon R7 260X		95 Sol/s
	Difference: 88 (93%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 260X		115 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 135 Watts (117%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 280 should in theory be quite a bit superior to the Radeon R7 260X overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
Radeon R7 260X		104000 MB/sec
	Difference: 136000 (131%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 is a lot (about 70%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon R7 260X. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 260X		61600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 42896 (70%)

Pixel Rate

If using high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 260X		17600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12256 (70%)

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 (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure 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 video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the video card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. 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 rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.