Radeon R9 270 vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 280X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1500 MHz on this model. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

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Benchmarks

These are real-world performance benchmarks that were submitted by Hardware Compare users. The scores seen here are the average of all benchmarks submitted for each respective test and hardware.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon R9 280X		8886 points
Radeon R9 270		5943 points
	Difference: 2943 (50%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 280X		21 Mh/s
Radeon R9 270		15 Mh/s
	Difference: 6 (40%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 270		150 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 280X should perform quite a bit faster than the Radeon R9 270 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 270		179200 MB/sec
	Difference: 108800 (61%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X will be a lot (approximately 51%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 270. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 270		72000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 36800 (51%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 270 will be a small bit (about 6%) better at FSAA than the Radeon R9 280X, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 270		28800 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 1600 (6%)

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 is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour 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 rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.