Radeon HD 7870 XT vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 280, which comes with core clock speeds of 933 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 3072 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 1792 SPUs as well as 112 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 280		7961 points
Radeon HD 7870 XT		6390 points
	Difference: 1571 (25%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 280		22 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7870 XT		15 Mh/s
	Difference: 7 (47%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (35%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 280 should theoretically be quite a bit better than the Radeon HD 7870 XT in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
	Difference: 48000 (25%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 will be a bit (more or less 18%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon HD 7870 XT. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15696 (18%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280 is superior to the Radeon HD 7870 XT, but not by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 256 (1%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output 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 reach the maximum fill rate.