Radeon R9 280 vs Radeon RX 6950 XT

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 6950 XT, which makes use of a 7 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1925 MHz. The GDDR6 RAM is set to run at a speed of 2250 MHz on this specific model. It features 5120 SPUs along with 320 Texture Address Units and 128 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
Radeon RX 6950 XT		335 Watts
	Difference: 85 Watts (34%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon RX 6950 XT, in theory, should be a lot faster than the Radeon R9 280 overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 6950 XT		589824 MB/sec
Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
	Difference: 349824 (146%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6950 XT will be a lot (more or less 489%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 280. (explain)

Radeon RX 6950 XT		616000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 511504 (489%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 6950 XT should be a lot (approximately 725%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon R9 280, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon RX 6950 XT		246400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 216544 (725%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface within a second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is worked out 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 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 that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in a 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 - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.