Radeon R9 280 vs Radeon RX 580

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 580, which comes with a clock frequency of 1257 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 2000 MHz. It also features a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 14 nm design. It is made up of 2304 SPUs, 144 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 RX 580		13630 points
Radeon R9 280		7961 points
	Difference: 5669 (71%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon RX 580		315 Sol/s
Radeon R9 280		183 Sol/s
	Difference: 132 (72%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon RX 580		28 Mh/s
Radeon R9 280		22 Mh/s
	Difference: 6 (27%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 580		185 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (35%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon RX 580 should perform just a bit faster than the Radeon R9 280 overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		262144 MB/sec
Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
	Difference: 22144 (9%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 580 will be a lot (about 73%) better at AF than the Radeon R9 280. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		181008 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 76512 (73%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 580 should be quite a bit (approximately 35%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 280, and should be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		40224 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10368 (35%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can 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 colour ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.