Radeon R9 280 vs Radeon RX 580

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 580, which makes use of a 14 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 1257 MHz. The GDDR5 memory runs at a frequency of 2000 MHz on this particular model. It features 2304 SPUs as well as 144 Texture Address Units and 32 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 RX 580		13630 points
Radeon R9 280		7961 points
	Difference: 5669 (71%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon RX 580		315 Sol/s
Radeon R9 280		183 Sol/s
	Difference: 132 (72%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon RX 580		28 Mh/s
Radeon R9 280		22 Mh/s
	Difference: 6 (27%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 580		185 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 65 Watts (35%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon RX 580 should in theory be a little bit superior to the Radeon R9 280 in general. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		262144 MB/sec
Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
	Difference: 22144 (9%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 580 will be much (approximately 73%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 280. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		181008 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 76512 (73%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 580 is much (more or less 35%) better at FSAA than the Radeon R9 280, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		40224 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10368 (35%)

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 megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, 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 in one second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the graphics card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.