Radeon R9 290X vs Radeon RX 590

Intro

Compare all that to the Radeon RX 590, which uses a 12 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 1469 MHz. The GDDR5 memory is set to run at a speed of 2000 MHz on this particular card. It features 2304 SPUs along with 144 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 590		175 Watts
Radeon R9 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 125 Watts (71%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 290X should theoretically be a lot better than the Radeon RX 590 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		320000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 590		262144 MB/sec
	Difference: 57856 (22%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 590 is quite a bit (approximately 50%) more effective at AF than the Radeon R9 290X. (explain)

Radeon RX 590		211536 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 70736 (50%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X should be a bit (about 9%) better at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon RX 590, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without losing too much performance. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 590		47008 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 4192 (9%)

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 data (in units of MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. It is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the bandwidth is, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics 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 its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.