Radeon HD 7950 3GB vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 280, which features GPU core speed of 933 MHz, and 3072 MB of GDDR5 RAM set to run at 1250 MHz through a 384-bit bus. It also is made up of 1792 Stream Processors, 112 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation 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.

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		229 Sol/s
Radeon R9 280		183 Sol/s
	Difference: 46 (25%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7950 3GB		200 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (25%)

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have the exact same bandwidth, so theoretically they should have the same performance. (explain)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 should be a little bit (approximately 17%) better at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7950 3GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		89600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 14896 (17%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 280 is a better choice, though only just barely. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7950 3GB		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4256 (17%)

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 max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the 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 maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of colour 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 output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.