Radeon HD 7870 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 set to run at 1250 MHz through a 512-bit bus. It also features 2816 SPUs, 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 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

The Radeon R9 290X, in theory, should perform much faster than the Radeon HD 7870 overall. (explain)

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

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X will be a lot (about 76%) more effective at AF 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 AA than the Radeon HD 7870, and also will be capable of handling higher 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 data (measured in megabytes per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the bus width by the speed of its memory. If it uses DDR type RAM, it must be multiplied by 2 again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are applied per second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels the graphics card can possibly record to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is calculated 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 drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to get to the max fill rate.