Radeon R9 290 vs Radeon R9 295X2

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 295X2, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 1018 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory set to run at 1250 MHz through a 512-bit bus. It also is made up of 2816 SPUs, 176 TAUs, and 64 Raster Operation 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 295X2		21205 points
Radeon R9 290		9876 points
	Difference: 11329 (115%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
Radeon R9 295X2		500 Watts
	Difference: 200 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 295X2 should theoretically be quite a bit better than the Radeon R9 290 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		640000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
	Difference: 320000 (100%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 295X2 is much (about 180%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon R9 290. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		358336 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 230336 (180%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 295X2 is the winner, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 295X2		130304 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 79104 (155%)

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.

One or more cards in this comparison are multi-core. This means that their bandwidth, texel and pixel rates are theoretically doubled - this does not mean the card will actually perform twice as fast, but only that it should in theory be able to. Actual game benchmarks will give a more accurate idea of what it's capable of.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video 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 card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the amount 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 rate is also dependant on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.