Radeon R9 270X vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare those specs to the Radeon R9 290X, which comes with a GPU core clock speed of 800 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1250 MHz through a 512-bit bus. It also is made up of 2816 SPUs, 176 TAUs, and 64 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 R9 290X		10609 points
Radeon R9 270X		6590 points
	Difference: 4019 (61%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290X		369 Sol/s
Radeon R9 270X		177 Sol/s
	Difference: 192 (108%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290X		29 Mh/s
Radeon R9 270X		18 Mh/s
	Difference: 11 (61%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 270X		180 Watts
Radeon R9 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 120 Watts (67%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 290X will be 79% faster than the Radeon R9 270X overall, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		320000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 270X		179200 MB/sec
	Difference: 140800 (79%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X will be much (more or less 76%) more effective at AF than the Radeon R9 270X. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 270X		80000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 60800 (76%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X should be much (approximately 60%) faster with regards to AA than the Radeon R9 270X, and also should be capable of handling higher resolutions more effectively. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 270X		32000 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 19200 (60%)

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 largest amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. It is worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster 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 processed per second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total texture units of the card 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 in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels that the graphics card could 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 colour ROPs by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.