Radeon R9 280X vs Radeon R9 380X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 380X, which has a clock frequency of 970 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1425 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is made up of 2048 SPUs, 128 Texture Address Units, and 32 ROPs.

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 380X		9519 points
Radeon R9 280X		8886 points
	Difference: 633 (7%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 280X		21 Mh/s
Radeon R9 380X		19 Mh/s
	Difference: 2 (11%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 380X		190 Watts
Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
	Difference: 60 Watts (32%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 280X should in theory be quite a bit better than the Radeon R9 380X overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 380X		182400 MB/sec
	Difference: 105600 (58%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 380X should be just a bit (approximately 14%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon R9 280X. (explain)

Radeon R9 380X		124160 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 15360 (14%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 380X is just a bit (approximately 14%) better at FSAA than the Radeon R9 280X, and also capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 380X		31040 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 3840 (14%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. 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 memory bandwidth, 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at handling 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 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 colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.