Radeon HD 7870 XT vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 280, which features GPU core speed of 933 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1250 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also features 1792 Stream Processors, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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 HD 7870 XT		6390 points
	Difference: 1571 (25%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 280		22 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7870 XT		15 Mh/s
	Difference: 7 (47%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (35%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 280 should be much faster than the Radeon HD 7870 XT in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
	Difference: 48000 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 is a bit (approximately 18%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 7870 XT. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15696 (18%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280 is a better choice, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 256 (1%)

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 transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated 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 output rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.