Radeon R7 260X vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 290X, which makes use of a 28 nm design. AMD has clocked the core frequency at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 RAM works at a speed of 1250 MHz on this card. It features 2816 SPUs along with 176 TAUs and 64 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 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

The Radeon R9 290X, in theory, should be quite a bit faster than the Radeon R7 260X overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X is a lot (more or less 129%) better 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

The Radeon R9 290X is a lot (about 191%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon R7 260X, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions more effectively. (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: Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better 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 applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Render Output Units 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 output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.