Radeon R9 280 vs Radeon RX 5500 XT

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 5500 XT, which uses a 7 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1717 MHz. The GDDR6 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1750 MHz on this specific card. It features 1408 SPUs as well as 88 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 5500 XT		130 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 120 Watts (92%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 280 will be 5% faster than the Radeon RX 5500 XT overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 5500 XT will be a lot (about 45%) better at AF than the Radeon R9 280. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500 XT		151096 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 46600 (45%)

Pixel Rate

If using lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon RX 5500 XT is superior to the Radeon R9 280, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500 XT		54944 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 25088 (84%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the 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 can be processed in one 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 graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. 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 rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.