Radeon R9 280X2 vs R9 285

Primary details

GPU architecture, market segment, value for money and other general parameters compared.

Place in the ranking313not rated
Place by popularitynot in top-100not in top-100
Cost-effectiveness evaluation8.73no data
Power efficiency6.36no data
ArchitectureGCN 3.0 (2014−2019)GCN 1.0 (2011−2020)
GPU code nameTongaTahiti
Market segmentDesktopDesktop
Release date2 September 2014 (10 years ago)no data (2024 years ago)
Launch price (MSRP)$249 no data

Cost-effectiveness evaluation

Performance to price ratio. The higher, the better.

no data

Detailed specifications

General parameters such as number of shaders, GPU core base clock and boost clock speeds, manufacturing process, texturing and calculation speed. Note that power consumption of some graphics cards can well exceed their nominal TDP, especially when overclocked.

Pipelines / CUDA cores17922048
Core clock speed918 MHz950 MHz
Boost clock speedno data1000 MHz
Number of transistors5,000 million4,313 million
Manufacturing process technology28 nm28 nm
Power consumption (TDP)190 Watt375 Watt
Texture fill rate102.8128.0
Floating-point processing power3.29 TFLOPS4.096 TFLOPS
ROPs3232
TMUs112128

Form factor & compatibility

Information on compatibility with other computer components. Useful when choosing a future computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. For desktop graphics cards it's interface and bus (motherboard compatibility), additional power connectors (power supply compatibility).

InterfacePCIe 3.0 x16PCIe 3.0 x16
Length221 mm315 mm
Width2-slot2-slot
Supplementary power connectors2x 6-pin3x 8-pin

VRAM capacity and type

Parameters of VRAM installed: its type, size, bus, clock and resulting bandwidth. Integrated GPUs have no dedicated video RAM and use a shared part of system RAM.

Memory typeGDDR5GDDR5
Maximum RAM amount2 GB3 GB
Memory bus width256 Bit384 Bit
Memory clock speed1375 MHz1500 MHz
Memory bandwidth176.0 GB/s288.0 GB/s

Connectivity and outputs

Types and number of video connectors present on the reviewed GPUs. As a rule, data in this section is precise only for desktop reference ones (so-called Founders Edition for NVIDIA chips). OEM manufacturers may change the number and type of output ports, while for notebook cards availability of certain video outputs ports depends on the laptop model rather than on the card itself.

Display Connectors2x DVI, 1x HDMI 1.4a, 1x DisplayPort 1.26x mini-DisplayPort 1.2
HDMI+-

API compatibility

List of supported 3D and general-purpose computing APIs, including their specific versions.

DirectX12 (12_0)12 (11_1)
Shader Model6.56.5 (5.1)
OpenGL4.64.6
OpenCL2.12.1 (1.2)
Vulkan1.2.1701.2.170

Pros & cons summary


Maximum RAM amount 2 GB 3 GB
Power consumption (TDP) 190 Watt 375 Watt

R9 285 has 97.4% lower power consumption.

R9 280X2, on the other hand, has a 50% higher maximum VRAM amount.

We couldn't decide between Radeon R9 285 and Radeon R9 280X2. We've got no test results to judge.


Should you still have questions concerning choice between the reviewed GPUs, ask them in Comments section, and we shall answer.

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AMD Radeon R9 285
Radeon R9 285
AMD Radeon R9 280X2
Radeon R9 280X2

Comparisons with similar GPUs

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Community ratings

Here you can see the user ratings of the compared graphics cards, as well as rate them yourself.


4.2 76 votes

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Questions & comments

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