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Radeon HD 5970 vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

The Radeon HD 5970 comes with a core clock frequency of 725 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1000 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 40 nm design. It features 1600 SPUs, 160 TAUs, and 64 ROPs.

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 280, which comes with a core clock frequency of 933 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also uses a 384-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1792 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 280 250 Watts
Radeon HD 5970 294 Watts
Difference: 44 Watts (18%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon HD 5970, in theory, should perform just a bit faster than the Radeon R9 280 overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970 256000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 280 240000 MB/sec
Difference: 16000 (7%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 is a lot (approximately 122%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 280. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970 232000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 280 104496 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 127504 (122%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon HD 5970 should be quite a bit (about 211%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 280, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon HD 5970 92800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280 29856 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 62944 (211%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

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Radeon HD 5970

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon R9 280

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model Radeon HD 5970 Radeon R9 280
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year November 2009 March 2014
Code Name Hemlock XT Tahiti Pro
Memory 1024 MB (x2) 3072 MB
Core Speed 725 MHz (x2) 933 MHz
Memory Speed 4000 MHz (x2) 5000 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 294 watts 250 watts
Bandwidth 256000 MB/sec 240000 MB/sec
Texel Rate 232000 Mtexels/sec 104496 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 92800 Mpixels/sec 29856 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 1600 (x2) 1792
Texture Mapping Units 160 (x2) 112
Render Output Units 64 (x2) 32
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 256-bit (x2) 384-bit
Fab Process 40 nm 28 nm
Transistors 2154 million 4313 million
Bus PCIe x16 PCIe 3.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 11 DirectX 11.2
OpenGL Version OpenGL 4.1 OpenGL 4.3

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It's calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core 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 amount of pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.

Display Prices

Hide Prices

Radeon HD 5970

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon R9 280

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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