Radeon R9 280 vs Radeon RX 5500

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 5500, which makes use of a 7 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 1670 MHz. The GDDR6 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1750 MHz on this specific card. It features 1408 SPUs as well as 88 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 5500		150 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 280 should be a little bit faster than the Radeon RX 5500 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 5500		229376 MB/sec
	Difference: 10624 (5%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 5500 is much (more or less 41%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon R9 280. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500		146960 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 42464 (41%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 5500 is a lot (more or less 79%) better at AA than the Radeon R9 280, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500		53440 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 23584 (79%)

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 data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once 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 higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output 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 max fill rate.