Radeon HD 7850 vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 280, which comes with GPU core speed of 933 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1250 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also features 1792 Stream Processors, 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 HD 7850		5200 points
	Difference: 2761 (53%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 280		183 Sol/s
Radeon HD 7850		171 Sol/s
	Difference: 12 (7%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 280		22 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7850		13 Mh/s
	Difference: 9 (69%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7850		130 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 120 Watts (92%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 280 will be 56% faster than the Radeon HD 7850 in general, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7850		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 86400 (56%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 will be much (about 90%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7850. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7850		55040 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 49456 (90%)

Pixel Rate

If running with high levels of AA is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280 is the winner, not by a very large margin though. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7850		27520 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2336 (8%)

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 data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If 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, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.