Radeon HD 7950 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 speed at 800 MHz. The GDDR5 memory works at a speed of 1250 MHz on this card. 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 HD 7950		7731 points
	Difference: 2878 (37%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290X		369 Sol/s
Radeon HD 7950		235 Sol/s
	Difference: 134 (57%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290X		29 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7950		21 Mh/s
	Difference: 8 (38%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7950		200 Watts
Radeon R9 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (50%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 290X should in theory be quite a bit better than the Radeon HD 7950 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		320000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7950		240000 MB/sec
	Difference: 80000 (33%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X should be much (about 57%) faster with regards to anisotropic filtering than the Radeon HD 7950. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7950		89600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 51200 (57%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X is quite a bit (approximately 100%) better at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7950, and capable of handling higher screen resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7950		25600 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 25600 (100%)

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 largest amount of information (measured in megabytes per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the bandwidth is, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of 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 the texel rate, the better the video 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 that the graphics chip can possibly record to its local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is calculated by multiplying the number of ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel output 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 max fill rate.