Radeon HD 7970 vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 290X, which has GPU clock speed of 800 MHz, and 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory running at 1250 MHz through a 512-bit bus. It also is comprised of 2816 SPUs, 176 Texture Address Units, 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 7970		8225 points
	Difference: 2384 (29%)

Grand Theft Auto V | 1920x1080 | Very High

Radeon R9 290X		60 FPS
Radeon HD 7970		37 FPS
	Difference: 23 (62%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290X		29 Mh/s
Radeon HD 7970		21 Mh/s
	Difference: 8 (38%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 7970		250 Watts
Radeon R9 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (20%)

Memory Bandwidth

Performance-wise, the Radeon R9 290X should in theory be quite a bit better than the Radeon HD 7970 overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		320000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 7970		264000 MB/sec
	Difference: 56000 (21%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X should be a small bit (approximately 19%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 7970. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		118400 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 22400 (19%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X is much (approximately 73%) more effective at anti-aliasing than the Radeon HD 7970, and also will be capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 7970		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 max amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved over the external memory interface in one second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, HDR and high resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the video card could possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the max fill rate.