Radeon R9 280 vs Radeon RX 480

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 480, which features clock speeds of 1120 MHz on the GPU, and 2000 MHz on the 8192 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2304 SPUs as well as 144 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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 RX 480		13349 points
Radeon R9 280		7961 points
	Difference: 5388 (68%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon RX 480		280 Sol/s
Radeon R9 280		183 Sol/s
	Difference: 97 (53%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon RX 480		27 Mh/s
Radeon R9 280		22 Mh/s
	Difference: 5 (23%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 480		150 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon RX 480 will be 9% faster than the Radeon R9 280 in general, due to its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		262144 MB/sec
Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
	Difference: 22144 (9%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 is much (about 54%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon R9 280. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		161280 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 56784 (54%)

Pixel Rate

If running with a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon RX 480 is superior to the Radeon R9 280, though only just barely. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		35840 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5984 (20%)

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: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This is calculated 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 processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly write to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.