Radeon HD 5870 vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 280, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 933 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1250 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also features 1792 SPUs, 112 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 62 Watts (33%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 280 should perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 5870 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 86400 (56%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 should be much (more or less 54%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 5870. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 36496 (54%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 should be a bit (more or less 10%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 5870, and will be capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2656 (10%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs 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 output rate is also dependant on lots of 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.