Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB vs Radeon R9 280

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 280, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 933 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1250 MHz on this particular card. It features 1792 SPUs as well as 112 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 280 should be 108% quicker than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		115200 MB/sec
	Difference: 124800 (108%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 should be a lot (approximately 296%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 78096 (296%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 will be a small bit (about 13%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 3870 X2 512MB		26400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3456 (13%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be applied in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video 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 card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. 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, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.