Radeon HD 6870 vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 280, which has a core clock speed of 933 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also makes use of a 384-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It features 1792 SPUs, 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 6870		2870 points
	Difference: 5091 (177%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6870		151 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 99 Watts (66%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 280 is 79% quicker than the Radeon HD 6870 in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6870		134400 MB/sec
	Difference: 105600 (79%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 should be a lot (more or less 107%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon HD 6870. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		50400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 54096 (107%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 should be just a bit (about 4%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 6870, and also able to handle higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6870		28800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1056 (4%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video 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 amount of pixels the video card could possibly record 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 - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel 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 potential to reach the maximum fill rate.