Radeon R9 280X vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 290, which comes with GPU core speed of 800 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1250 MHz through a 512-bit bus. It also features 2560 Stream Processors, 160 TAUs, and 64 ROPs.

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 290		9876 points
Radeon R9 280X		8886 points
	Difference: 990 (11%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 280X		294 Sol/s
Radeon R9 290		283 Sol/s
	Difference: 11 (4%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290		29 Mh/s
Radeon R9 280X		21 Mh/s
	Difference: 8 (38%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (20%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 290 should be 11% faster than the Radeon R9 280X overall, due to its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
	Difference: 32000 (11%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 should be a bit (about 18%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon R9 280X. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19200 (18%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 290 is superior to the Radeon R9 280X, by a large margin. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24000 (88%)

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: Bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved past the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs 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 rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.