Radeon R9 280 vs Radeon RX 5700 XT 50th Anniversary Edition

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 5700 XT 50th Anniversary Edition, which features GPU core speed of 1680 MHz, and 8096 MB of GDDR6 RAM running at 1750 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also is comprised of 2560 SPUs, 160 Texture Address Units, and 64 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 5700 XT 50th Anniversary Edition		235 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 15 Watts (6%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon RX 5700 XT 50th Anniversary Edition is 91% faster than the Radeon R9 280 overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon RX 5700 XT 50th Anniversary Edition		458752 MB/sec
Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
	Difference: 218752 (91%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 5700 XT 50th Anniversary Edition is much (more or less 157%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon R9 280. (explain)

Radeon RX 5700 XT 50th Anniversary Edition		268800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 164304 (157%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon RX 5700 XT 50th Anniversary Edition is the winner, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon RX 5700 XT 50th Anniversary Edition		107520 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 77664 (260%)

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 largest amount of information (counted in megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, 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 amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.