Radeon R9 290 vs Radeon R9 290X

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 290X, which has a core clock frequency of 800 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 1250 MHz. It also uses a 512-bit bus, and makes use of a 28 nm design. It is comprised of 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 R9 290		9876 points
	Difference: 733 (7%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290X		369 Sol/s
Radeon R9 290		283 Sol/s
	Difference: 86 (30%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290		29 Mh/s
Radeon R9 290X		29 Mh/s
	Difference: 0 (0%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Both cards have the same power consumption.

Memory Bandwidth

Both cards have exactly the same memory bandwidth, so theoretically they should perform the same. (explain)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290X will be a small bit (approximately 10%) more effective at AF than the Radeon R9 290. (explain)

Radeon R9 290X		140800 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 12800 (10%)

Pixel Rate

Both cards have the exact same pixel rate, so theoretically they should perform equally good at at AA, and be able to handle the same screen resolutions. (explain)

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 MB per second) that can be transported across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. 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 can be processed in one second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the graphics card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The figure is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the core 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 is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the max fill rate.