Radeon R9 280 vs Radeon RX 590

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 590, which has a GPU core clock speed of 1469 MHz, and 8192 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 2000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 2304 SPUs, 144 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 590		175 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 75 Watts (43%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon RX 590 should theoretically perform a bit faster than the Radeon R9 280 overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 590		262144 MB/sec
Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
	Difference: 22144 (9%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 590 should be a lot (more or less 102%) better at AF than the Radeon R9 280. (explain)

Radeon RX 590		211536 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 107040 (102%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon RX 590 is superior to the Radeon R9 280, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon RX 590		47008 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 17152 (57%)

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 (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.