Radeon R9 280 vs Radeon RX 580

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 580, which has GPU core speed of 1257 MHz, and 8192 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 2000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 2304 SPUs, 144 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation 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

As far as performance goes, the Radeon RX 580 should in theory be a little bit better than 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 a lot (more or less 73%) more effective at anisotropic 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%) more effective at AA than the Radeon R9 280, and also capable of handling higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the 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 that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units 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 output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.