Radeon R9 280 vs Radeon RX 480 4GB

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon RX 480 4GB, which makes use of a 14 nm design. AMD has set the core frequency at 1120 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM is set to run at a speed of 1750 MHz on this card. It features 2304 SPUs as well as 144 TAUs and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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.

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon RX 480 4GB		267 Sol/s
Radeon R9 280		183 Sol/s
	Difference: 84 (46%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon RX 480 4GB		25 Mh/s
Radeon R9 280		22 Mh/s
	Difference: 3 (14%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		150 Watts
Radeon R9 280		250 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 280 should theoretically be just a bit better than the Radeon RX 480 4GB in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 280		240000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 480 4GB		229376 MB/sec
	Difference: 10624 (5%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 4GB is a lot (more or less 54%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 280. (explain)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		161280 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 56784 (54%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 4GB is just a bit (more or less 20%) better at AA than the Radeon R9 280, and will be able to handle higher resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon RX 480 4GB		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 largest amount of information (counted in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If the card has DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.