Radeon HD 7870 vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 280, which comes with a clock frequency of 933 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also features a 384-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It features 1792 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation 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 HD 7870		6230 points
	Difference: 1731 (28%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 280		183 Sol/s
Radeon HD 7870		172 Sol/s
	Difference: 11 (6%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 280		22 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7870		16 Mh/s
	Difference: 6 (38%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (43%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 280 should in theory be a lot faster than the Radeon HD 7870 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 86400 (56%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 will be quite a bit (approximately 31%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 7870. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 24496 (31%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon HD 7870 is the winner, but it probably won't make a huge difference. (explain)

Radeon HD 7870		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 maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling 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 the video card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.