Radeon R9 280X vs Radeon R9 290

Intro

Compare those specifications to the Radeon R9 290, which has 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 2560 SPUs, 160 Texture Address Units, and 64 ROPs.

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 290		9876 points
Radeon R9 280X		8886 points
	Difference: 990 (11%)

Zcash Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 280X		294 Sol/s
Radeon R9 290		283 Sol/s
	Difference: 11 (4%)

Ethereum Mining Hash Rate

Radeon R9 290		29 Mh/s
Radeon R9 280X		21 Mh/s
	Difference: 8 (38%)

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon R9 280X		250 Watts
Radeon R9 290		300 Watts
	Difference: 50 Watts (20%)

Memory Bandwidth

As far as performance goes, the Radeon R9 290 should theoretically be a bit better than the Radeon R9 280X overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		320000 MB/sec
Radeon R9 280X		288000 MB/sec
	Difference: 32000 (11%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 290 should be just a bit (approximately 18%) more effective at AF than the Radeon R9 280X. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		128000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon R9 280X		108800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 19200 (18%)

Pixel Rate

If running with lots of anti-aliasing is important to you, then the Radeon R9 290 is a better choice, and very much so. (explain)

Radeon R9 290		51200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon R9 280X		27200 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 24000 (88%)

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 maximum amount of data (measured in MB per second) that can be transported past the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory clock speed. In the case of DDR memory, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, HDR and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that are processed in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total texture units of the card by the core clock 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 applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels that the graphics card can possibly write to its local memory in one second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.