Radeon R9 290X vs Radeon RX 580

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon RX 580, which has a clock speed of 1257 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 2000 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and makes use of a 14 nm design. It is comprised of 2304 SPUs, 144 TAUs, and 32 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

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 RX 580		13630 points
Radeon R9 290X		10609 points
	Difference: 3021 (28%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290X		369 Sol/s
Radeon RX 580		315 Sol/s
	Difference: 54 (17%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290X		29 Mh/s
Radeon RX 580		28 Mh/s
	Difference: 1 (4%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 580		185 Watts
Radeon R9 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 115 Watts (62%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 290X should in theory be quite a bit superior to the Radeon RX 580 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		320000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 580		262144 MB/sec
	Difference: 57856 (22%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 580 will be a lot (more or less 29%) faster with regards to AF than the Radeon R9 290X. (explain)

Radeon RX 580		181008 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 40208 (29%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X is quite a bit (about 27%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon RX 580, and should be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 580		40224 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 10976 (27%)

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 (counted in MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. The number is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR type RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card can possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.