Radeon HD 7970 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 set to run at 1250 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1792 Stream Processors, 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 HD 7970		8225 points
Radeon R9 280		7961 points
	Difference: 264 (3%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 280		22 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7970		21 Mh/s
	Difference: 1 (5%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon HD 7970 should perform just a bit faster than the Radeon R9 280 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
	Difference: 24000 (10%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 7970 should be a little bit (approximately 13%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 280. (explain)

Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 13904 (13%)

Pixel Rate

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

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka 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 of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.