Radeon R9 290 vs Radeon R9 390 8G

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon R9 390 8G, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 1000 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a speed of 1500 MHz on this specific model. It features 2560 SPUs as well as 160 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 390 8G		12733 points
Radeon R9 290		9876 points
	Difference: 2857 (29%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 390 8G		326 Sol/s
Radeon R9 290		283 Sol/s
	Difference: 43 (15%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290		29 Mh/s
Radeon R9 390 8G		28 Mh/s
	Difference: 1 (4%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 390 8G		275 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 25 Watts (9%)

Memory Bandwidth

The Radeon R9 390 8G, in theory, should perform a bit faster than the Radeon R9 290 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		384000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
	Difference: 64000 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 390 8G will be a lot (more or less 25%) better at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon R9 290. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		160000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 32000 (25%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 390 8G is superior to the Radeon R9 290, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 390 8G		64000 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 12800 (25%)

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 maximum amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface within a second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.