Radeon HD 6790 vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare all 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 RAM is set to run at a frequency of 1250 MHz on this particular model. It features 2816 SPUs as well as 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 6790		2150 points
	Difference: 8459 (393%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6790		150 Watts
Radeon R9 290X		300 Watts
	Difference: 150 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 290X is 138% faster than the Radeon HD 6790 overall, due to its greater data rate. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		320000 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6790		134400 MB/sec
	Difference: 185600 (138%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X should be much (more or less 319%) better at AF than the Radeon HD 6790. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6790		33600 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 107200 (319%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X will be a lot (approximately 281%) faster with regards to FSAA than the Radeon HD 6790, and also will be able to handle higher resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6790		13440 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 37760 (281%)

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 data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred over the external memory interface within a second. It is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

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

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card could possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Raster Operations Pipelines by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of 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.