Radeon HD 7970 vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 290X, which has core speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2816 SPUs along with 176 TAUs and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

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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.

3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Score

Radeon R9 290X		10609 points
Radeon HD 7970		8225 points
	Difference: 2384 (29%)

Grand Theft Auto V | 1920x1080 | Very High

Radeon R9 290X		60 FPS
Radeon HD 7970		37 FPS
	Difference: 23 (62%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290X		29 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7970		21 Mh/s
	Difference: 8 (38%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
Radeon R9 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (20%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 290X should perform a lot faster than the Radeon HD 7970 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		320000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
	Difference: 56000 (21%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X should be a small bit (about 19%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 7970. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22400 (19%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X should be quite a bit (about 73%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7970, and also should be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21600 (73%)

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 max amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.