Radeon R9 285 vs Radeon RX 480

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 480, which features a core clock speed of 1120 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 2000 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 14 nm design. It features 2304 SPUs, 144 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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 RX 480		13349 points
Radeon R9 285		8500 points
	Difference: 4849 (57%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon RX 480		27 Mh/s
Radeon R9 285		18 Mh/s
	Difference: 9 (50%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 480		150 Watts
Radeon R9 285		190 Watts
	Difference: 40 Watts (27%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon RX 480 should be 49% faster than the Radeon R9 285 in general, because of its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		262144 MB/sec
Radeon R9 285		176000 MB/sec
	Difference: 86144 (49%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 is quite a bit (more or less 57%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon R9 285. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		161280 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 285		102816 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 58464 (57%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon RX 480 is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		35840 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 285		29376 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 6464 (22%)

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 data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics 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 most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to the 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 - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel 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 reach the maximum fill rate.