Radeon R9 280 vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 280X, which comes with clock speeds of 850 MHz on the GPU, and 1500 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2048 SPUs along with 128 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

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 280		7961 points
	Difference: 925 (12%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 280X		294 Sol/s
Radeon R9 280		183 Sol/s
	Difference: 111 (61%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 280		22 Mh/s
Radeon R9 280X		21 Mh/s
	Difference: 1 (5%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 280X will be 20% quicker than the Radeon R9 280 overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
	Difference: 48000 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X should be a bit (more or less 4%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon R9 280. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4304 (4%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280 is superior to the Radeon R9 280X, but not by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2656 (10%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it must 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, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.