Radeon R9 280 vs Radeon RX 5500 XT

Intro

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

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

The Radeon R9 280 should theoretically perform a bit faster than the Radeon RX 5500 XT in general. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 5500 XT should be quite a bit (approximately 45%) more effective at 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 will be a lot (more or less 84%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon R9 280, and also able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (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: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total amount 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 applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. 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 output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.