Radeon R9 280 vs Radeon RX 590

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 590, which makes use of a 12 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 1469 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 2000 MHz on this card. It features 2304 SPUs along with 144 Texture Address Units and 32 ROPs.

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

In theory, the Radeon RX 590 should be a small 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%) more effective at AF 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 should be quite a bit (approximately 57%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon R9 280, and should be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (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

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's 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 of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.