Radeon R9 280X vs Radeon RX 480

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 480, which uses a 14 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 1120 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 2000 MHz on this specific card. It features 2304 SPUs along with 144 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

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 280X		8886 points
	Difference: 4463 (50%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 280X		294 Sol/s
Radeon RX 480		280 Sol/s
	Difference: 14 (5%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon RX 480		27 Mh/s
Radeon R9 280X		21 Mh/s
	Difference: 6 (29%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 480		150 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 280X, in theory, should be just a bit faster than the Radeon RX 480 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 480		262144 MB/sec
	Difference: 25856 (10%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 should be much (approximately 48%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 280X. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		161280 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 52480 (48%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon RX 480 is the winner, by far. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		35840 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 8640 (32%)

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 max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's 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 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 high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at 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 chip can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.