Radeon R9 280 vs Radeon RX 6950 XT

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 6950 XT, which uses a 7 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1925 MHz. The GDDR6 RAM works at a speed of 2250 MHz on this particular model. It features 5120 SPUs as well as 320 Texture Address Units and 128 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
Radeon RX 6950 XT		335 Watts
	Difference: 85 Watts (34%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon RX 6950 XT should be 146% faster than the Radeon R9 280 overall, due to its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon RX 6950 XT		589824 MB/sec
Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
	Difference: 349824 (146%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 6950 XT should be quite a bit (approximately 489%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon R9 280. (explain)

Radeon RX 6950 XT		616000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 511504 (489%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon RX 6950 XT is superior to the Radeon R9 280, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon RX 6950 XT		246400 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 216544 (725%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, 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 number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.