Radeon RX 480 vs Radeon R9 280

Radeon RX 480
Memory: 8192Mb GDDR5DESKTOP
Release date: 29 Jun 2016
Radeon RX 480
Radeon R9 280
Memory: 3072Mb GDDR5DESKTOP
Release date: 4 Mar 2014
Radeon R9 280

Summary

Synthetic performance index

  • Radeon RX 480
    188%
  • Radeon R9 280
    100%

Relative performance

Reasons to consider Radeon RX 480

50 watts lower power draw. This might be a strong point if your current power supply is not enough to handle the Radeon R9 280 .
This is a much newer product, it might have better long term support.
Around 88% higher average synthetic performance.
Supports Direct3D 12 Async Compute
Supports FreeSync
Supports ReLive (allows game streaming/recording with minimum performance penalty)
Supports TrueAudio
Based on an outdated architecture (AMD GCN), there may be no performance optimizations for current games and applications

Reasons to consider Radeon R9 280

Supports Direct3D 12 Async Compute
Supports ReLive (allows game streaming/recording with minimum performance penalty)
Supports Mantle
Based on an outdated architecture (AMD GCN), there may be no performance optimizations for current games and applications

Radeon RX 480

HWBench recommends Radeon RX 480

The Radeon RX 480 is the better performing card based on the synthetic benchmarks used (1 benchmarks).


Specifications

Core Configuration

Radeon RX 480Radeon R9 280
GPU NameEllesmere (Ellesmere XT)vsTahiti (Tahiti PRO3)
Fab Process14 nmvs28 nm
Die Size232 mm²vs352 mm²
Transistors5,700 millionvs4,313 million
Shaders2304vs1792
Compute Units36vs28
Core clock1120 MHzvs827 MHz
ROPs32vs32
TMUs144vs112

Memory Configuration

Radeon RX 480Radeon R9 280
Memory TypeGDDR5vsGDDR5
Bus Width256 bitvs384 bit
Memory Speed2000 MHz
8000 MHz effective
vs1250 MHz
5000 MHz effective
Memory Size8192 Mbvs3072 Mb

Additional details

Radeon RX 480Radeon R9 280
TDP150 wattsvs200 watts
Release Date29 Jun 2016vs4 Mar 2014

Raw Performance comparison

Pixel Rate

  • Radeon RX 480
    40.50 GP/s
  • Radeon R9 280
    29.86 GP/s

GigaPixels - higher is better

Texel Rate

  • Radeon RX 480
    182.30 GT/s
  • Radeon R9 280
    104.50 GT/s

GigaTexels - higher is better

Memory bandwidth

  • Radeon RX 480
    256.00 GB/s
  • Radeon R9 280
    240.00 GB/s

GB/s - higher is better

Single precision performance

  • Radeon RX 480
    5834.00 GFLOPs
  • Radeon R9 280
    3344.00 GFLOPs

GFLOPs - higher is better

Synthetic benchmarks

3DMark 11

  • Radeon RX 480
    18430
  • Radeon R9 280
    9790

Points (higher is better)