Radeon R9 280 vs Radeon RX Vega M GL 870

If you are going to buy a new graphics card and are choosing between Radeon R9 280 and Radeon RX Vega M GL 870, there are a couple of things to consider. Cards with more VRAM in general perform better and allow you to play on higher graphics settings. Size also makes a difference. A model with a large heatsink can occupy up to three expansion slots on a motherboard. Be sure you have enough room in your PC case. When comparing GPUs with different architectures, more processing cores and even higher TFLOPS will not always translate to better performance. To help you decide which GPU you need, we have measured frame rates in a number of popular games. For more on how the Radeon R9 280 stacks up against Radeon RX Vega M GL 870, check out specs charts below.

Radeon RX Vega M GL 870 is a Laptop Graphics Card

Note: Radeon RX Vega M GL 870 is only used in laptop graphics. It has lower GPU clock speed compared to the desktop variant, which results in lower power consumption, but also 10-30% lower gaming performance. Check available laptop models with Radeon RX Vega M GL 870 here:

Main Specs

  Radeon R9 280 Radeon RX Vega M GL 870
Power consumption (TDP) 200 Watt
Interface PCIe 3.0 x16
Supplementary power connectors 1 x 6-pin + 1 x 8-pin
Memory type GDDR5 HBM2
Maximum RAM amount 3 GB 4 GB
Display Connectors 2x DVI, 1x HDMI, 2x mini-DisplayPort
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  • Radeon RX Vega M GL 870 has 1 GB more memory, than Radeon R9 280.
  • Radeon R9 280 is used in Desktops, and Radeon RX Vega M GL 870 - in Laptops.
  • Radeon R9 280 is build with GCN 1.0 architecture, and Radeon RX Vega M GL 870 - with Vega.
  • Radeon R9 280 is manufactured by 28 nm process technology, and Radeon RX Vega M GL 870 - by 14 nm process technology.

Game benchmarks

high / 1080p 35−40 35−40
ultra / 1080p 21−24 21−24
QHD / 1440p 16−18 16−18
4K / 2160p 10−11 10−11
low / 720p 60−65 60−65
medium / 1080p 40−45 40−45
Radeon R9 280 and Radeon RX Vega M GL 870 have the same average FPS in Assassin's Creed Odyssey.

Full Specs

  Radeon R9 280 Radeon RX Vega M GL 870
Architecture GCN 1.0 Vega
Code name Tahiti Vega Kaby Lake-G
Type Desktop Laptop
Release date 4 March 2014 7 January 2018
Pipelines 1792 1280
Core clock speed 931 MHz
Boost Clock 933 MHz 1011 MHz
Transistor count 4,313 million
Manufacturing process technology 28 nm 14 nm
Texture fill rate 104.5
Floating-point performance 3,344 gflops
Length 275 mm
Memory bus width 384 Bit
Memory clock speed 1250 MHz
Memory bandwidth 240 GB/s
Shared memory -
DirectX DirectX 12_1
Shader Model 5.1
OpenGL 4.6
OpenCL 1.2
Vulkan +
FreeSync +
Bus support PCIe 3.0
HDMI +
Bitcoin / BTC (SHA256) 408 Mh/s
Laptop size medium sized
Eyefinity +
HD3D +
TrueAudio +
Design reference
CrossFire +
DDMA audio +
Ethereum / ETH (DaggerHashimoto) 21.5 Mh/s
LiquidVR +
TressFX +
UVD +
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