Radeon R9 280 vs Radeon RX 5500 XT

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon RX 5500 XT, which features GPU core speed of 1717 MHz, and 8192 MB of GDDR6 memory running at 1750 MHz through a 128-bit bus. It also is comprised of 1408 Stream Processors, 88 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 5500 XT		130 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 120 Watts (92%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 280 should be 5% faster than the Radeon RX 5500 XT in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 5500 XT		229376 MB/sec
	Difference: 10624 (5%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 5500 XT is quite a bit (about 45%) faster with regards to texture filtering than the Radeon R9 280. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500 XT		151096 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 46600 (45%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 5500 XT should be much (approximately 84%) better at AA than the Radeon R9 280, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon RX 5500 XT		54944 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 25088 (84%)

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 largest amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the 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 core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.