Radeon R9 280 vs Radeon RX 7900 XTX

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 7900 XTX, which has core clock speeds of 1855 MHz on the GPU, and 2500 MHz on the 24576 MB of GDDR6 RAM. It features 6144 SPUs as well as 384 TAUs and 192 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
Radeon RX 7900 XTX		355 Watts
	Difference: 105 Watts (42%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon RX 7900 XTX should perform a lot faster than the Radeon R9 280 overall. (explain)

Radeon RX 7900 XTX		983040 MB/sec
Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
	Difference: 743040 (310%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 7900 XTX is quite a bit (about 582%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 280. (explain)

Radeon RX 7900 XTX		712320 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 607824 (582%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 7900 XTX will be a lot (about 1093%) more effective at AA than the Radeon R9 280, and also able to handle higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon RX 7900 XTX		356160 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 326304 (1093%)

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 max amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling 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 its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as 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, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.