Radeon R9 280 vs Radeon RX 590

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 590, which has a core clock frequency of 1469 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 2000 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and uses a 12 nm design. It is comprised of 2304 SPUs, 144 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

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 in theory be 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 is quite a bit (approximately 102%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon R9 280. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon RX 590 is the winner, by far. (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 largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video 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 maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.