Radeon R9 280 vs Radeon RX 480

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon RX 480, which comes with a clock speed of 1120 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 2000 MHz. It also uses a 256-bit memory bus, and uses a 14 nm design. It is made up of 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 480		13349 points
Radeon R9 280		7961 points
	Difference: 5388 (68%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon RX 480		280 Sol/s
Radeon R9 280		183 Sol/s
	Difference: 97 (53%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon RX 480		27 Mh/s
Radeon R9 280		22 Mh/s
	Difference: 5 (23%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 480		150 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon RX 480 should perform a small bit faster than the Radeon R9 280 in general. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		262144 MB/sec
Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
	Difference: 22144 (9%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 will be a lot (about 54%) more effective at AF than the Radeon R9 280. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		161280 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 56784 (54%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 is a bit (approximately 20%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon R9 280, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		35840 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280		29856 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 5984 (20%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 are applied in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the the core 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 fill rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.