Radeon R9 280 vs Radeon RX 480 4GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon RX 480 4GB, which comes with a core clock frequency of 1120 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1750 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 14 nm design. It is made up of 2304 SPUs, 144 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation 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.

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon RX 480 4GB		267 Sol/s
Radeon R9 280		183 Sol/s
	Difference: 84 (46%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon RX 480 4GB		25 Mh/s
Radeon R9 280		22 Mh/s
	Difference: 3 (14%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		150 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 280 should perform a small bit faster than the Radeon RX 480 4GB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 480 4GB		229376 MB/sec
	Difference: 10624 (5%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 4GB is quite a bit (about 54%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 280. (explain)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		161280 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 56784 (54%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 4GB should be a small bit (about 20%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 280, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		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 (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units of the card by the core 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 applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.