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Radeon R9 280 vs Radeon RX 590

Intro

The Radeon R9 280 features a clock speed of 933 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1250 MHz. It also features a 384-bit memory bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 1792 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 590, which makes use of a 12 nm design. AMD has clocked the core speed at 1469 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed 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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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 590 175 Watts
Radeon R9 280 250 Watts
Difference: 75 Watts (43%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon RX 590 should in theory be just a bit faster than the Radeon R9 280 in general. (explain)

Radeon RX 590 262144 MB/sec
Radeon R9 280 240000 MB/sec
Difference: 22144 (9%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 590 is a lot (approximately 102%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon R9 280. (explain)

Radeon RX 590 211536 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 280 104496 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 107040 (102%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 590 is quite a bit (more or less 57%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon R9 280, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon RX 590 47008 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280 29856 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 17152 (57%)

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

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Radeon R9 280

Amazon.com

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Radeon RX 590

Amazon.com

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Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model Radeon R9 280 Radeon RX 590
Manufacturer AMD AMD
Year March 2014 November 2018
Code Name Tahiti Pro Polaris 30
Memory 3072 MB 8192 MB
Core Speed 933 MHz 1469 MHz
Memory Speed 5000 MHz 8000 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 250 watts 175 watts
Bandwidth 240000 MB/sec 262144 MB/sec
Texel Rate 104496 Mtexels/sec 211536 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 29856 Mpixels/sec 47008 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 1792 2304
Texture Mapping Units 112 144
Render Output Units 32 32
Bus Type GDDR5 GDDR5
Bus Width 384-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 28 nm 12 nm
Transistors 4313 million 5700 million
Bus PCIe 3.0 x16 PCIe 3.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 11.2 DirectX 12.0
OpenGL Version OpenGL 4.3 OpenGL 4.5

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 amount 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 speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.

Display Prices

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Radeon R9 280

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon RX 590

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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