Radeon HD 7870 XT vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon R9 290X, which features core speeds of 800 MHz on the GPU, and 1250 MHz on the 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 2816 SPUs along with 176 Texture Address Units 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 HD 7870 XT		6390 points
	Difference: 4219 (66%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290X		29 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7870 XT		15 Mh/s
	Difference: 14 (93%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870 XT		185 Watts
Radeon R9 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 115 Watts (62%)

Memory Bandwidth

In theory, the Radeon R9 290X should be 67% faster than the Radeon HD 7870 XT in general, because of its greater bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		320000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		192000 MB/sec
	Difference: 128000 (67%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X will be a lot (about 59%) more effective at texture filtering than the Radeon HD 7870 XT. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		88800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 52000 (59%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X is quite a bit (approximately 73%) more effective at full screen anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7870 XT, and capable of handling higher resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870 XT		29600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 21600 (73%)

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 maximum amount of data (counted in MB per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR RAM, the result should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better 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 amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is worked out by multiplying the total amount of texture units 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 applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly record to the local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.