Radeon R9 290 vs Radeon RX 480

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon RX 480, which has core clock speeds of 1120 MHz on the GPU, and 2000 MHz on the 8192 MB of GDDR5 memory. It features 2304 SPUs as well as 144 TAUs and 32 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 RX 480		13349 points
Radeon R9 290		9876 points
	Difference: 3473 (35%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290		283 Sol/s
Radeon RX 480		280 Sol/s
	Difference: 3 (1%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290		29 Mh/s
Radeon RX 480		27 Mh/s
	Difference: 2 (7%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon RX 480		150 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 150 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically, the Radeon R9 290 should perform much faster than the Radeon RX 480 in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
Radeon RX 480		262144 MB/sec
	Difference: 57856 (22%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon RX 480 should be much (more or less 26%) more effective at AF than the Radeon R9 290. (explain)

Radeon RX 480		161280 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 33280 (26%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 should be quite a bit (about 43%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon RX 480, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon RX 480		35840 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 15360 (43%)

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 maximum amount of data (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. In the case of DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster 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 can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total amount of 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 applied per second.

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