Radeon R7 240 vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 280, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 933 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1250 MHz on this model. It features 1792 SPUs as well as 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 R7 240		1218 points
	Difference: 6743 (554%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 240		30 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 220 Watts (733%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 280 should in theory perform much faster than the Radeon R7 240 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
Radeon R7 240		28800 MB/sec
	Difference: 211200 (733%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 should be much (about 616%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon R7 240. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 240		14600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 89896 (616%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 should be a lot (about 411%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R7 240, and will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 240		5840 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24016 (411%)

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 information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 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, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the 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 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 amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.