Radeon R9 280 vs Radeon RX 590

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 590, which has a GPU core clock speed of 1469 MHz, and 8192 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 2000 MHz through a 256-bit bus. It also features 2304 SPUs, 144 TAUs, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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

The Radeon RX 590 should theoretically perform a 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 much (approximately 102%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 280. (explain)

Radeon RX 590		211536 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 280		104496 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 107040 (102%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon RX 590 is superior to the Radeon R9 280, and very much so. (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 maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.