Radeon HD 7870 vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 290X, which comes with GPU core speed of 800 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 RAM running at 1250 MHz through a 512-bit bus. It also features 2816 SPUs, 176 Texture Address Units, and 64 Raster Operation 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 HD 7870		6230 points
	Difference: 4379 (70%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290X		369 Sol/s
Radeon HD 7870		172 Sol/s
	Difference: 197 (115%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290X		29 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7870		16 Mh/s
	Difference: 13 (81%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7870		175 Watts
Radeon R9 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 125 Watts (71%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 290X should be 108% faster than the Radeon HD 7870 in general, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		320000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7870		153600 MB/sec
	Difference: 166400 (108%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X is a lot (more or less 76%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 7870. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		80000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 60800 (76%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X should be quite a bit (about 60%) better at FSAA than the Radeon HD 7870, and also should be capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7870		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 max amount of information (in units of megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface in one second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the memory bandwidth, the better 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 number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly record to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is worked out by multiplying the amount of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate is also dependant on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the maximum fill rate.