Radeon R9 280 vs Radeon R9 390X 8G

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 390X 8G, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 1050 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1500 MHz on this model. It features 2816 SPUs along with 176 Texture Address Units and 64 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 390X 8G		13555 points
Radeon R9 280		7961 points
	Difference: 5594 (70%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 390X 8G		330 Sol/s
Radeon R9 280		183 Sol/s
	Difference: 147 (80%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 390X 8G		32 Mh/s
Radeon R9 280		22 Mh/s
	Difference: 10 (45%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
Radeon R9 390X 8G		275 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (10%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 390X 8G should in theory perform a lot faster than the Radeon R9 280 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 390X 8G		384000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
	Difference: 144000 (60%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 390X 8G will be much (about 77%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 280. (explain)

Radeon R9 390X 8G		184800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 80304 (77%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 390X 8G is much (approximately 125%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 280, and also will be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 390X 8G		67200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 37344 (125%)

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 maximum amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video 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 number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.