Radeon R7 260X vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 290X, which uses a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this specific model. It features 2816 SPUs as well as 176 Texture Address Units and 64 Rasterization Operator Units.

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 R7 260X		4381 points
	Difference: 6228 (142%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290X		29 Mh/s
Radeon R7 260X		14 Mh/s
	Difference: 15 (107%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290X		369 Sol/s
Radeon R7 260X		95 Sol/s
	Difference: 274 (288%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R7 260X		115 Watts
Radeon R9 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 185 Watts (161%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 290X should theoretically be a lot superior to the Radeon R7 260X in general. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		320000 MB/sec
Radeon R7 260X		104000 MB/sec
	Difference: 216000 (208%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X is much (approximately 129%) more effective at AF than the Radeon R7 260X. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R7 260X		61600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 79200 (129%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon R9 290X is superior to the Radeon R7 260X, by far. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R7 260X		17600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 33600 (191%)

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 (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred 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. In the case of DDR memory, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen 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 of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. 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 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 maximum fill rate.