Radeon R9 280 vs Radeon R9 280X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 280X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has set the core speed at 850 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a frequency of 1500 MHz on this particular model. It features 2048 SPUs as well as 128 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

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 R9 280X		8886 points
Radeon R9 280		7961 points
	Difference: 925 (12%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 280X		294 Sol/s
Radeon R9 280		183 Sol/s
	Difference: 111 (61%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 280		22 Mh/s
Radeon R9 280X		21 Mh/s
	Difference: 1 (5%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 280X should be 20% faster than the Radeon R9 280 overall, because of its higher data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
	Difference: 48000 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 280X is a small bit (more or less 4%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 280. (explain)

Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 4304 (4%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 280 should be a little bit (about 10%) more effective at AA than the Radeon R9 280X, and able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2656 (10%)

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 max amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total 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 per second.

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